Switch off the editor’s digest free of charge
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Great Britain has agreed that Spain that occurred in Gibraltar, as part of an agreement to remove border controls for people who move between the two areas, will check, according to British and European official.
The skirt’s airport will be almost completely closed to freight, and trucks and ships have to stop at Spanish customs near the border, said an official of the European Commission.
The British territory will increase its sales tax from 3 percent to at least 15 percent within three years of ratification of the deal to avoid unfair competition with Spain, in which VAT is higher, the European official added.
The Gibaltar authorities supported the deal because almost all of the goods are already on land, said the European official, and the changes will enable its citizens to travel to Spain unhindered and work within limits.
A British official confirmed that Gibraltar had accepted the conditions for sales tax and that the goods imported in the territory were checked and cleared by EU customs officers in Spain. A Gibraltar officer did not comment immediately.
There will be exceptions to checks for certain products, such as It will also be possible to send goods with a stopover in the nearby Spanish port of Algeciras to get checks.
The port of Gibraltar, which takes a strategic position at the goal to the Mediterranean, is an important capital for other reasons than freight imports. It houses British naval ships, cruise ships and luxury yachts and is an important fuel bunker hub for ships that leave and enter the Mediterranean.
The area was handed over by the Spanish crown in Great Britain in 1713. While Spain claims sovereignty, the vast majority of its 34,000 people want to remain British.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starrer praised the deal presented on Wednesday, which solves one of the last major conflicts after Brexit. Gibraltar’s first minister Fabian Picardo also supported the deal.
Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition conservative party, said on Thursday that she had not yet seen the complete details of the deal that she had assured her through the fact that Picardo supported it.
“I actually trust his judgment,” said Badenoch, the Minister of Commerce was the previous government. “My concern is that Keir Starrer is never a good business when it signs a deal. We always lose.”
Spanish border officials will check the passports at the airport and at the port and, under certain circumstances, reject entry in the British citizens, since the abolition of the border puts the area in the EU border zone.
The agreement, which the EU member states and the European Parliament had to be approved, was necessary if Spain should allow relationships with London to be reset to London.
“It would have been very difficult … a number of states like Spain to conclude new agreements with Great Britain without finding a solution for Gibraltar,” they said.
Madrid has blocked British entry into some cooperation agreements of EU defense due to its military presence on the rock, where it has a naval and air base.
At a summit last month, the EU and the United Kingdom declared that a veterinarian for the smooth trade in food and animals and a security pact with which the British defense industry gives access to EU money. “
