MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UK prepared to veto Spain's entry to the EC over Gibraltar restrictions in 1984/85

Then Foreign Secretary Howe believed using UK's veto was 'entirely justifiable'

British officials thought Spain could “not be trusted” to keep its promises to lift restrictions on Gibraltar prior to joining the European Community, according to declassified documents released to The National Archives.

 So concerned were officials at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) that Spain would renege on its promise to fully re-open the border they sought to build a “tripwire” into the accession process which would enable Britain to veto Spain’s entry.

The papers released on Friday include a detailed briefing on the implications of Spain’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), the precursor to the European Union (EU).

The FCO’s Roger Bone wrote to then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s private secretary for overseas affairs, John Coles, in July 1983, stating: “Many Spanish restrictions on Gibraltar will be illegal under Community law if still in place when Spain accedes to the Community...In practice, because Spanish promises cannot be trusted, we must build into the accession process a tripwire such that if the border is not open as the date of accession approaches, we shall still be in a position to prevent accession by (for example) not depositing our instrument of ratification”.

Bone identified three areas where Spanish measures would potentially conflict with Community law: the free movement of goods, the free movement of persons and labor and rights of establishment.

The full re-opening of the land border was essential and Bone said Britain must obtain a public Spanish commitment to re-opening the frontier by a certain date to make sure Spanish assurances were “bankable”.

“If the border were not open by that date, we would refuse to ratify the Treaty...We should thus keep entirely in our own hand whether or not Spain actually acceded, avoiding the danger of committing ourselves irrevocably to accession upon the strength only of Spanish promises about the restrictions,” he concluded.

Then Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe believed that using Britain’s veto to prevent Spain’s accession would be “entirely justifiable” in the circumstances but sounded a note of caution in a letter to the Prime Minister in September 1984.

“If we maintained our veto and Spain failed to join the Community, our partners both inside and outside the Community would see this in itself as a major setback for Western interests for which we would be blamed,” he wrote.

The border was fully, re-opened in February 1985 and Spain joined the European Community the following year.