Formal treaty round set for next week as negotiation enters ‘final stages’

The next formal round of negotiation for a UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit relations with the bloc will take place in London on Wednesday and Thursday next week.

Confirmation of the date came as the Chief Minister said the negotiation was in the “final stages of success, or in the death throes”, albeit all sides still want to reach an agreement.

Gibraltar, the UK and Spain have repeatedly stated publicly, most recently last week, that they remain committed to a treaty to establish what they have described as “an area of shared prosperity” between Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar, with border fluidity at its core.

Negotiators from the UK – with Gibraltar – and the EU will meet in the run-up to Christmas after months during which the process has been on hold due to general elections in Spain and Gibraltar.

With governments now installed here and in Madrid, the formal negotiation with the EU can resume.

“The EU and the UK have discussed and agreed on resuming the negotiations on an EU-UK agreement on Gibraltar,” a European Commission official told the Chronicle.

“The next negotiations are foreseen for 13-14 December and will touch upon some of the main pillars of the future agreement.”

The date of the next formal round, the fourteenth since the process started, was confirmed a day after the UK, Gibraltar and Spain met in Malaga to discuss treaty issues.

Preliminary meetings of this nature have been common ahead of other formal rounds in the past, part of the constant contact between officials in all three camps and the EU.

Speaking on GBC’s Gibraltar Today in a ‘Direct Democracy’ programme on Tuesday, Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said the Malaga meeting was “very positive and productive” albeit “tough in some respects”.

“I hope that we'll be able to see the progress that we all want to see as soon as possible,” he said.

“I'm not going to subject myself to a timeline. I think that subjecting ourselves to a timeline is not helpful.”

“But there are already obvious dates in the horizon which we have to be very alive to.”

That last comment was a reference to European Parliament elections due to take place in June next year, a date that Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares recently described as “a cut-off point” for the treaty talks.

Additionally, the UK is likely to hold a general election in 2024 and although a date for that has yet to be announced, it could come as soon as next April or May. An electoral process in the UK would again put the treaty negotiation on hold.

Despite his reluctance to set out a timeline, the Chief Minister was speaking just days after the Governor, Vice Admiral Sir David Steel, said all sides hoped to have “at least” an agreement-in-principle in place by Christmas.

“Of course everybody wants to achieve it in that time,” Mr Picardo said on Tuesday.

“I mean, the people around the table yesterday in Malaga have all become at a personal level quite friendly but we're sick of seeing each other to talk. We want to see each other to sign.”

“His Excellency the Governor is absolutely right that we would hope to be able to move things forward in some way by Christmas if we can.”

“But we hoped to do it before last Christmas and before last Easter, you will recall.”

Mr Picardo declined to be drawn on the detail of any remaining issues to be resolved in the negotiation, including a reported disagreement on the future of the airport.

Spain has said it wants “joint use” of the airport, something rejected by Gibraltar and the UK, which prefer the phrase “enhanced use” but point out too that the airport was not included in the framework agreement that forms the basis for the negotiation.

From the outset of the talks, Mr Picardo stressed the importance of discretion as negotiators with firm red lines sought to bring positions closer to enable an agreement.

“If I felt that it was in the interests of the people of Gibraltar for me to give you any of that detail, you would have it,” he said.

“I have to keep it to myself at this time because I think it's in the interest of the people of Gibraltar that I do and that I emerge from the negotiations with Joseph [Garcia] and with the support of my Cabinet with a solution that we put before you and we say is safe and secure.”

He said both sides in the negotiation had restated core positions - “it’s an important part of how everybody understands their positions in the negotiation” – and that to have provided a “blow by blow” account would have risked derailing the talks because of outside pressure.

“So I ask you, please, now that we are, I think, either in the final stages of success or in the death throes of this negotiation, either one way or the other, to give us just this final space where we make the announcement of what is agreed, or we explain why nothing can be agreed.”