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BBC explores Brexit impact on Gib

A hard Brexit would pose an existential threat to the Gibraltar economic model, the Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo, told the BBC’s Today Programme.

A ‘hard Brexit’, Mr Picardo explained to the radio programme over the weekend, would mean a complete exit from the single market and no arrangements as to freedom of movement.

“What might be a disastrous exit for the United Kingdom would be an existential threat to Gibraltar's current economic model,” he said.

Mr Picardo also discussed some of the post-Brexit options open to the Rock to protect Gibraltar’s position and the wishes of the people to remain in the EU, and which his government has been engaged in talks internationally.

The so-called ‘reverse-Greenland’ model is one such option. This, Mr Picardo said, envisages one part of a member state leaving the European Union because it chooses to do so and other parts of the member state remaining with access to the single market and freedom of movement being the things that matter most to us.

“There are other models that are applicable. I think the important thing now is not to pretend that we’ve found the right model but to do an analysis, a legal analysis and then also a political analysis of what models might be possible,” he said.

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