Lammy and Picardo insist Schengen immigration arrangements mirror 2020 agreement, despite concerns

How Schengen checks will be conducting in Gibraltar, and by whom, was one of the most complex areas of the negotiation that led to Wednesday’s political agreement for a UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar.

The arrangements announced in Brussels mean anyone flying into Gibraltar will have to undergo both Gibraltar and Schengen immigration checks on landing. Port arrivals will also have to comply, though these are mostly cruise arrivals who are pre-cleared.

The arrangements mean there will be no need for immigration controls at the border given Gibraltar would, in effect, have a common travel area with the Schengen zone.

But how will all of this work in practice?

“For the EU, full Schengen checks will be carried out by Spain,” the UK, EU, Spain and Gibraltar said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

“For the UK, full Gibraltar checks will continue to be carried out as they are today.”

It was always the case that Spain, as the neighbouring Schengen state, would be the ultimate guarantor for its EU partners of the integrity of those immigration controls.

Yet the announcement yesterday appeared to move away from previous positions in that, while it was originally envisaged that Frontex officers would assist Spain in carrying out the Schengen controls for a period of four years, that no longer seems to be the case.

The full details will be set out in the treaty text, which will take some time to be finalised and published.

But the prospect of Schengen checks by Spanish officers triggered alarm for many yesterday including in the UK press, even though it had been envisaged from the outset and was set out in the 2020 New Year’s Eve agreement between the UK and Spain.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Schengen immigration checks at Gibraltar International Airport would “mirror and parallel” similar arrangements in St Pancras in London, where French officers work alongside their UK counterparts.

“We worked hard on this issue and, of course, it was a complex issue for us to deal with,” Mr Lammy told reporters when quizzed on the issue.

“But the arrangements that I think we have been able to put in place mirror and parallel the sorts of arrangements that you see at St Pancras in London, where you do have French customs officers working alongside and in a second line to UK officers.”

“So that will be the new arrangement in the airport and what that means, effectively, is that the complexity, the length and time that it has taken for Spanish workers moving into Gibraltar, and indeed the many people leaving Gibraltar and going into Spain, that is all reduced.”

He said the arrangements would mean “there can be a parallel system and a second line that allows for that Schengen process alongside, of course, the importance of Gibraltar's own customs, immigration and police personnel, as you would expect.”

Chief Minister Fabian Picardo insisted the arrangements were “exactly the same” as had been agreed in 2020 during the negotiation for the New Year’s Eve agreement.

They hinged, he said, on a joint facility that will straddle the border into both Gibraltar and Spain, colloquially referred to as ‘the Schengen shack’.

It is here that any Schengen entry issues will be resolved.

“The work we've had to do in respect of them has been very technical, but the geography of how that will work has not changed at all in the context of the period of the negotiation,” he said.

He said the focus of the negotiation on this point had been largely related to the EU’s new systems for visas and automated border controls which are due to enter into force later this year.

Pressed on whether this represented a deviation from the longstanding position of no Spanish boots on the ground, he insisted: “That is a shorthand message which was as valid then as it is now.”

Mr Lammy was also challenged on his comparison to the arrangements at St Pancras, in the sense that British citizens travelling from one British territory to another would have to show their passport to a third country authority.

“The people of Gibraltar are facing effectively a hard border,” Mr Lammy said.

“This is a border where 15,000 people are crossing [for work] every day and that's why we had to roll our sleeves up and get this deal done.”

Mr Lammy reiterated that the agreement reached on Wednesday built on the deal done by the then Conservative Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab.

And he said of the role of Spanish officers: “Of course, it's important to understand they're acting on behalf of the European Union.”

“But as a result of leaving the European Union, there is a border.”

“The question for us was, how do you make that border as frictionless as possible, as seamless as possible?”

“And as you've heard, we were very clear that there would be no deal unless Gibraltar was happy.”

“So there could be no deal without Gibraltar.”

“And I think we've achieved that deal today.”

Responding to the same question, Mr Picardo said over 90% of people arriving in Gibraltar from the UK were travelling to Spain and would have to undergo Schengen checks after passing Gibraltar immigration on landing at the airport.

“What we're doing is we're bringing those two closer together,” he said, adding that this had been agreed when it was negotiated as part of the New Year’s Eve framework agreement between the UK and Spain.

“I described that we would do this in an area built in the northernmost corner of Gibraltar Airport, which would be equidistant in Gibraltar and Spain, which would enable us to have this facility, which would be a common operating facility for second line checks where necessary.”

“And that's how we're going to be able to do it in a way that satisfies all of our concerns in respect to sovereignty and jurisdiction and doesn't cause any issues for us in respect to being already separate immigration authorities.”