Treaty text to be published this week

The legal text of the UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit relations with the bloc will be published by the European Commission this week, Spain’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jose Manuel Albares, said on Monday.

Mr Albares was speaking to reporters as he arrived in Brussels for a meeting of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council.

He said the Commission had informed Spain that the text would be published on its website during the course of the week.

He gave no exact date, though the Chronicle understands it will be toward the end of the week.

Faced with criticism in Spain about a lack of transparency about the treaty, Mr Albares insisted he had set out all the elements of the agreement in the Spanish Parliament and had briefed Campo mayors and the regional government in Andalucia on its contents.

“Transparency, ongoing communication, and making information available to representatives — both political and socio-economic — of those 300,000 Andalusians in the Campo de Gibraltar and, in particular, those 15,000 workers who every day cross from the Campo de Gibraltar into Gibraltar, and vice versa, have been one of the guiding principles..,” he told reporters.

“And this week, the legal text will be uploaded to the Commission’s website and will be available to anyone who wants to download it.”

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