MPs question if Frontex impinges on SOVEREIGNTY

  • Printer friendly view
 Thursday, November 25, 2021 - 09:54

by RYAN ASQUEZ
Concerns about Frontex were prominent during the session of the European Scrutiny Committee at the House of Commons. Conservative MP David Jones asked the Chief Minister whether it was contradictory to say that the framework agreed last year did not touch upon sovereignty, jurisdiction and control when Frontex officials would have to operate within Gibraltar’s territory and require Gibraltar to apply ‘a substantial body’ of EU law.


The Chief Minister did not agree with this assessment, citing the example of the agreement between the United Kingdom and France whereby French gendarmes at King’s Cross station in London can allow advanced clearance for those entering France through there. He explained that this did not compromise British sovereignty over the station: ‘it is to create an administrative permission set out in an international treaty where the UK permits a thing and is able in future to undo that permission in the exercise of its sovereignty’.
With regards to Gibraltar, arrivals at the Airport would have to be granted permission to enter Gibraltar – exclusively by the Gibraltar Borders and Coastguard Agency – and also permission to enter the Schengen Area by Frontex. ‘And if you have that permission you are then able to roam into Spain at will and from Spain into the rest of the European Union’, he continued. ‘If we don’t have these provisions in place it’s not that you can roam into Schengen and Spain without showing your passport...You will in fact have to show your passport to the Spanish Guardia Civil at the Frontier in order to enter Spain and Schengen’.

MORE IN PANORAMA PRINT EDITION

25-11-21 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR