MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UN Consensus “does not change anything about Gibraltar’s British sovereignty”

“Instead of pursuing useless proposals like that of Joint Sovereignty”, what matters is returning to dialogue for the mutual benefit of people from both sides of the frontier, said CM Picardo .

The Gibraltar government has reacted to a United Nations Consensus Decision about Gibraltar agreed between the United Kingdom and Spain during the annual event claiming it “changes nothing in relation to the continued British Sovereignty over Gibraltar”.

 In the release the government of Gibraltar points out that its position is that the UN should be more concerned with fulfilling its obligations under the Charter and the Covenants paramount among which is the right of peoples to self-determination, and “Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar has therefore never supported the process nor have we supported aspects of the content of the Consensus”.

The Consensus now sets out the conflicting views of the United Kingdom and Spain.

This year, for the first time, it contains a reference to the double lock mechanism whereby the UK “will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another State against their freely and democratically expressed wishes, nor enter into a process of sovereignty negotiations with which Gibraltar is not content“.

The Chief Minister of Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar, the Hon Fabian Picardo QC MP, said: ”The new Consensus Decision adopted by the UN 4th Committee changes nothing. It represents no advance whatsoever for Spain’s stale and stillborn claim to our Sovereignty. In fact if anything, the reference to the double lock on Sovereignty helps to reaffirm that our wishes are the paramount determining factor. Instead of pursuing useless proposals like that of Joint Sovereignty which Spain has put at the UN, what we should be doing is returning to dialogue for the mutual benefit of people from both sides of the frontier. As we have been saying since we were first elected in 2011, this is a time for calm reflection, dialogue, discretion and cooperation as opposed to the conflict and confrontation which has been the hallmark of the communications from the representatives of Spain over the last five years. Let's move on and do the job of making people's lives better which is what politicians are elected to do.”