The EU urges the UK to “redouble efforts” to advance the agreement on Gibraltar

London – The European Commissioner for Trade, Economic Security, Interinstitutional Relations, and Transparency, Maros Sefcovic, urged the United Kingdom on Tuesday to “redouble efforts” to advance negotiations on Gibraltar following Brexit.

“We are making good progress thanks to the intense work of our teams. Now we must redouble efforts to resolve the final issues and advance the negotiations,” Sefcovic wrote on the social media platform X after meeting this afternoon in London with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

This meeting comes a month after the “technical talks” held in London between the British Secretary of State for Europe, Stephen Doughty; the advisor to the European Commission, Clara Martínez Alberola; the Spanish Secretary of State for the EU, Fernando Sampedro, and the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabián Picardo, to reach a consensus on an agreement regarding the Rock.

On March 18, Sampedro also defended in Brussels that the EU should have a “closer” relationship with the United Kingdom and advocated for all pending issues, such as the Gibraltar agreement, to be resolved for that rapprochement to be “complete.”

The negotiation of the agreement regarding the British colony, which was left pending after Brexit – executed on January 31, 2020 – “has been on the table for a long time” and Spain hopes that “the British government can give its OK,” he pointed out at that time.

Withdrawal Agreement from the European Union

During his visit to the capital of the United Kingdom, Sefcovic also met with the British Cabinet Secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, with whom he committed to the “full, timely, and faithful implementation” of the Withdrawal Agreement from the European Union.

The rights of European citizens under the EU settlement scheme in the United Kingdom or avoiding the implementation of a physical border in Northern Ireland to protect the EU’s single market and the integrity of the British one were some of the “priorities” shared by both in a subsequent statement.

The British government led by Labour’s Keir Starmer is willing to “restore” relations with the EU, and both delegations will hold the first British-European bilateral summit in London on May 19, with the aim of achieving concrete progress. (April 29)