Gibraltar frontier controls condemned

Date: 05/06/1997

CITIZENS rights groups are calling on the EU to make greater efforts to ensure that rules on free movement of people are respected at the border between Spain and Gibraltar.

“By any standards, the controls on free movement of people are excessive by comparison with any other border within the Union and, for that matter, any external border,” says a report drawn up by the Euro Citizen Action Service (ECAS) and the Gibraltar Association for European Rights (GAER).

The study was sparked by numerous protests to ECAS from angry Gibraltarians complaining that they regularly experienced unreasonable delays - sometimes of up to six hours - when trying to cross the border with Spain.

Because of its status as a tax haven, the Rock is not covered by EU rules on the free movement of goods. But it is subject to laws on the free movement of people and, under the Maastricht Treaty, its inhabitants are classed as European citizens.

Spain claims that it has no specific vendetta against the people of Gibraltar, but must be allowed to defend its national security. “Gibraltar is a focus for drug smuggling and money-laundering. Indeed, the European Commission has noted that there is a lack of transposition of EU directives in these areas,” said a Spanish foreign ministry official.

Madrid also argues that as the UK is not part of the Schengen free-movement area, it is not possible to relax controls on the Rock's frontier.

“If the UK signed Schengen, we could open up the border,” said one Spanish official, safe in the knowledge that London has made it abundantly clear that it has no intention of doing so.

As a compromise, the report suggests that the Schengen states sign a special free-movement agreement with Gibraltar. But such a step would be without precedent and would have to be agreed unanimously by all the signatories to the Schengen accord, including Madrid.

ECAS and GAER also say immediate action is needed over the Spanish authorities' refusal to accept Gibraltarian identity cards as valid travel documents. Madrid claims the Gibraltarian government is not competent to issue such documents, but the report points to a European Commission decision that the disputed cards are valid. If Spain does not change its attitude, it says, the Commission should start infringement procedures.

Officials at the Directorate-General for the internal market (DGXV) say they will not shy away from taking action if necessary, but argue that the situation appears to be improving of its own accord.

They point to a meeting in January between the Spanish and British foreign ministers as evidence of increasingly warm Anglo-Spanish relations.

On a practical level, the report suggests that traffic crossing the border in both directions should be more clearly separated, with different lanes for commercial vehicles, private cars and coaches. This should speed things up considerably and would not require major changes to existing infrastructure.