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Salvador de la Encina: “We live together”

Salvador de la Encina: Member of Parliament for Cadiz

Uncertainty has overpowered the Brexit process.

Nobody in the United Kingdom or Spain or the European Union is capable of hazarding a guess as to what is going to happen tomorrow let alone in one hundred days, on the 29th March, the date marked in the European calendar for the fateful farewell of the British to what was once the European Common Market, the European Economic Community and is now the European Union, a multilateral association to which the United Kingdom has belonged for over 45 years, admittedly amid countless disputes on account of a British aversion to yielding sovereignty and excessive bureaucratic obstacles and, for the sake of balance, the Union’s obsession with regulating even the most trifling issues.

Gibraltar and La Linea
@Nick Gomez

Gibraltar has accompanied the United Kingdom in its European adventure with a better disposition than the United Kingdom as a whole – that much was made clear in the referendum when Gibraltar massively rejected the leave option – even though their status was “sui generis” the Europeanism of the Gibraltarian has been more than proven.

The situation now is different. It is possible that the British Parliament will reject the agreement negotiated with the EU. In that eventuality one must ask what the future of Gibraltar will be outside the Union, on the UK’s departure.

We have before us a Memorandum and various Protocols which were settled following tough negotiations between the United Kingdom and Spain with decisive and active Gibraltarian presence in the British Delegation. Those documents can remain alive, and so there is the basis for an accord which can survive to guarantee the current “status quo” which is delivering good results.

Any agreement which does not benefit just one of the parties is a good one. This is the case here. Both parties have made concessions so that the region can continue to progress.

The financial agreements, those on tobacco, the frontier etc regulate matters which were not previously governed by effective applicable regulations. The other limb of this political commitment is the ‘Plan Integral del Campo de Gibraltar’ (Integrated Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar), funded initially with one billion euros, which will serve as a springboard for the citizens of the district of the Campo de Gibraltar.

The notion that we are condemned to understand each other is the worst possible expression to describe the situation. The best one is that synergies are being exploited among and between neighbouring friendly populations. Between competing ports, between industries that trade on both sides of the frontier, between workers and managers who exchange ideas; it is a call to deepen relationships.

That thousands of workers should work in Gibraltar is encouraging, but the creation of new businesses in the Campo de Gibraltar hinterland is even more promising. It will help to achieve the re balancing called for as a matter of social justice and territorial cohesion. For this idea to flourish it must first be accepted and then promoted by all parties.

We live together, we work together. Let us go forward together.

What do you think?