Spain\u2019s prime minister on Wednesday reiterated his threat to vote against the draft deal on Britain\u2019s exit from the European Union at the weekend unless it guarantees Madrid\u2019s veto over Gibraltar\u2019s future status.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s Prime Minister Theresa May is due to sign a treaty with EU leaders to leave the bloc on Sunday, but Spain\u2019s warning over the contested British territory on Spain\u2019s southern tip may add another complication.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this is not resolved by Sunday, Spain unfortunately…will have to vote no, and exercise its veto because this is a question that affects the essence of our country,\u201d Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a joint news conference with his Portuguese counterpart Antonio Costa in the central Spanish city of Valladolid.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, as the declaration stands, unfortunately we do not feel represented nor reflected. What we are doing is defending the interests of the Spain, and we will that until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the legal service of the EU Council has tried to reassure Spain that the text does not preclude this, Madrid is upset that the draft Brexit deal does not clearly spell out that it will have a veto over the tiny territory\u2019s future status.<\/p>\n
Before the start of Brexit negotiations in June 2017, the EU assured that no agreement between the bloc and Britain would apply to Gibraltar without Spain\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s Foreign Minister Josep Borrell had already warned on Monday, after a meeting of EU ministers, that the draft deal does not spell out how Gibraltar should be handled.<\/p>\n
Sanchez\u2019s minority Socialist government has been criticised by the main opposition conservative Popular Party for not using the Brexit negotiations to press Madrid\u2019s claims over Gibraltar, a tiny 2.6 square mile territory which is home to about 30,000 people<\/p>\n
His government has adopted a tough stance on Gibraltar just as the southern region of Andalusia, a Socialist bastion which surrounds the British territory, is gearing up for a regional election next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cSanchez is under pressure at home from the right ahead of elections in Andalusia on December 2 and is making a big play on this for domestic consumption,\u201d said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at research firm Eurasia Group in London.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t see it as a deal-breaker, but this issue is the one which could potentially flare up on Sunday night,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spain\u2019s prime minister on Wednesday reiterated his threat to vote against the draft deal on Britain\u2019s exit from the European Union at the weekend unless it guarantees Madrid\u2019s veto over Gibraltar\u2019s future status. Britain\u2019s Prime Minister Theresa May is due to sign a treaty with EU leaders to leave the bloc on Sunday, but Spain\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48085,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48083\/revisions\/48085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}