New era for Gibraltar with removal of border controls with Spain

Gibraltar Prime Minister Fabian Picardo said the new regulations, which will be introduced provisionally with the approval of the UK and European Parliaments, represent a “major change” for the region.

“One of the key things that has defined Gibraltar for the past eight generations is the restrictions on the border,” he told the BBC at Gibraltar government headquarters.

Picardo describes the agreement as ensuring “complete and absolute fluidity of people and goods” between Gibraltar on the one hand and Spain and the EU on the other.

Picardo says the most obvious economic benefit to Gibraltar will be increased arrivals.

“Businesses will now be able to see an increase in footfall in Gibraltar that will not be constrained by a potential queue at the entrance or border queue at the exit.”

Spain’s objection to British sovereignty over Gibraltar is an issue that occasionally flares up in the political arena. During the most infamous period of recent bilateral tensions, Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco launched a blockade of Rock in 1969, which was only lifted in 1982, long after his death.

The Prime Minister considers the new regulation as the exact opposite of the blockade; opening the border in a logical and mutually beneficial manner.

“This will be big for human relations, it will be big for business, it will be big for workers on the border, it will be a new dawn for Gibraltar’s relations with Spain and the EU,” Picardo says.

Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares took a similar view, speaking of a “new era” for Rock.

But the agreement also means that goods sold in Gibraltar must comply with EU legislation, which has not been the case until now.