Gibraltar: the last frontier of Brexit

An agreement between Britain and the European Union over the future of Gibraltar is reportedly "getting closer".

Despite "significant progress" made on issues related to the economy, trade and the environment, the nature of the relationship between the Mediterranean territory and the EU "remains unresolved after Brexit", said The Independent. Rules governing Gibraltar's border with Spain are understood to have been the "major sticking point".

Eurosceptic Conservative MPs have said that proposals for EU border guards to be posted at Gibraltar's airport represent a threat to British sovereignty and set a precedent for other British overseas territories.

What is the status of Gibraltar since Brexit?

Since the UK opted to leave the EU in 2016, Gibraltar – which voted 96% to remain – has been "in a state of nervous limbo", said The New European.

Eight years on from the referendum, the 35,000 or so inhabitants of "the Rock", the majority of whom identify as British and who vehemently rejected a joint sovereignty plan with Spain in 2002, "still have no idea what their future relationship with the EU will be", said the newspaper.

The territory was not included in the UK-EU post-Brexit trade deal and had been left outside the EU's customs union by the leave vote. A temporary "pre-deal" arrangement was introduced in 2020, which effectively allowed freedom of movement at the Spain-Gibraltar border to avoid disruption, while letting Gibraltar remain a British territory.

This is vital for Gibraltar's economy, said the Financial Times. The Rock is "as wealthy as it is cramped": a "freakishly overdeveloped tiny place not even 3 square miles in size" that relies on more than 15,000 cross-border commuters from Spain to "double the size of its workforce every day". Without the workers, the economy "would grind to a halt".

No agreement would mean a hard border between Gibraltar and Spain, which could subject commuters to long delays along a frontier just over a mile long. It would also wreak havoc on trade, as Gibraltar imports almost all of its goods.

Why has progress been so slow?

In principle, Spain and Gibraltar agree on a need for smooth cross-border relations, said the FT. But "bigger matters are at play".

Spain refuses to recognise British sovereignty over the territory, which was originally ceded to the UK "in perpetuity" in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. Spain's official position, both on the left and right, has always been that the British overseas territory belongs to Spain. Successive conservative governments have attempted to take at least partial control of the Rock, and the Spanish right has long used Gibraltar as a "whack-a-mole for energizing a nationalist audience", said US socialist magazine Jacobin.

What is the border plan?

Talks have been ongoing for nearly two years to establish a common travel area between Gibraltar and the EU's Schengen zone, effectively making it a de facto Schengen member, which would remove the need for most controls at the border.

However, some Conservative MPs have talked of a "sellout" by the UK government, with Bill Cash, chair of the Commons' European Scrutiny Committee, recently warning that allowing checks by EU border guards at the airport would "erode British sovereignty to the point of meaninglessness".

EU immigration checks at the airport would be "utterly unacceptable", said The Telegraph in an editorial, "partly because the airport is a joint civil-military facility that doubles as a RAF station", making this "not just a matter of sovereignty, but also of control of a strategically significant British defence asset".

The fear, said The Independent, is that this "will see EU Frontex border guards decide who can enter the British overseas territory – and will give them the power to turn away British citizens".

There are also "wider concerns" about this treaty with the EU, said the news site. These include "implications of a dilution of British sovereignty in areas such as Northern Ireland and even potentially the UK bases in Cyprus, where pressure is mounting over land that is British sovereign territory".