Cameron and Albares discuss Gib treaty

Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron and his Spanish counterpart, Jose Manuel Albares, discussed the negotiation for a Gibraltar treaty on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York this weekend.

The meeting was revealed on Saturday by Mr Albares himself in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

The two men had discussed Gibraltar in a phone call late last year after Lord Cameron’s appointment as Foreign Secretary and at the time, according to Mr Albares, had voiced a desire to “move forward as soon as possible”.

Nearly three months on, the message was much the same on Saturday and came against the backdrop of continued negotiation but no breakthrough in the talks for a UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit relations with the bloc.

“I have met again with my colleague from the United Kingdom, @David_Cameron to promote the agreement in relation to Gibraltar,” Mr Albares said in the post on X, which he accompanied with an image of the two men talking.

“We want an area of shared prosperity.”

The UK Government has made no comment on the meeting and Mr Cameron did not include any mention of it in a series of social media posts from New York, where world leaders had gathered to mark two years since the start of the Ukraine war.

A spokesperson for No.6 Convent Place described the meeting as “a positive encounter” and said Chief Minister Fabian Picardo and Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia had been “fully briefed” before and after the event.

“The meeting was constructive and also, of course, related to other matters including Ukraine, the second anniversary of the illegal invasion of which was the reason that both of them were at the United Nations in New York,” the spokesperson said.

“All sides remain committed to seeking an agreement for a UK/EU Treaty on Gibraltar's future relationship with the EU.”