MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine lawmakers wish to travel to Falklands but with no migration passport stamping

The trip wishes to establish closer relations with Falkland Islanders, even personal links, and work on a positive agenda, said lawmaker Cornelia Schmidt Liermann (center)

A group of Argentine lawmakers from president Mauricio Macri's coalition is willing to travel to the Falkland Islands in the near future, but, a big but is that their passports are not to be stamped by migration when they land in the Islands.

Apparently, this has been requested to the United Kingdom, via the British embassy in Buenos Aires and the members of the Lower House Foreign Relations Commission are waiting for a “positive” reply. The news was broken by Martin Dinatale, an Argentine journalist who quite often writes on Falklands' affairs. Dinatale explains that lawmakers don't want a Falklands' migration stamp, since this “would undermine the Argentine sovereignty claim over the Malvinas.”

The idea of the trip is to establish closer relations with the Falkland Islanders, even personal links, and work on a positive agenda, according to Cornelia Schmidt Liermann, chairwoman of the Foreign Relations commission, who also convinced coalition members who belong to the Parliamentary Malvinas Observatory.

Dinatale writes that the request of no stamp was made directly to ambassador Mark Kent but he said the issue was beyond his authority and “even the British arriving in the Falklands have their passports stamped.”

Lower House Foreign relations commission members belonging to Macri's coalition who would accompany Ms Schmidt Liermann include Paulo Oliveto, Eduardo Amadeo, Alejandro Etchegaray and Facundo Suarez Lastra. Opposition members of the commission have yet to reply to the initiative.

“A trip of lawmakers to Malvinas would imply closer links with Islanders to dialogue about a positive agenda, joint scientific exploration and cultural exchanges” Ms Schmidt Liermann told Dinatale, although the visit “would not imply giving up the sovereignty claim.”

But again the main obstacle remains avoiding the Falkland Islands migration stamp on the Argentine lawmakers passports. However lawmaker and ex vice-president Julio Cobos in July 2014 did a private visit to the Falklands and his passport was duly stamped.

In related news members of the Parliamentary Malvinas Observatory have sent a letter to the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, requesting that the European Council secretariat includes “an amendment in EU rules identifying the Malvinas in the same terms as with Gibraltar”, so that once the UK withdraws from the EU, it will have to involve in negotiations in the framework of the United Nations.

In effect, Dinatale recalls that once Brexit has been settled, the UE is expected to include an amendment, lobbied by Madrid, describing Gibraltar as a colony and involved in a sovereignty dispute with Spain, which must be solved at the United Nations. Members of the Macri coalition want the EU to make this extensive to the Falklands/Malvinas case, in such a way if forces the UK to sit and negotiate the sovereignty conflict with Argentina.