Britain and the EU signed a treaty on Tuesday that ends passport checks at Gibraltar’s land border with Spain. About 15,000 people who cross that border every day will simply walk through. The agreement takes provisional effect on Wednesday, four years after negotiations began.
The signing in Brussels closes a gap that has persisted since Britain left the EU in 2020. European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič and British Minister of State for Europe Stephen Doughty put pen to paper alongside Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares and Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo. Gibraltar was never covered by the 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement, so the territory has spent four years without any permanent border arrangement with Spain.
Gibraltar’s land border with Spain will lose its physical checks altogether once the deal takes effect. Passport and customs controls move instead to the territory’s airport and port, where Spanish officers will carry out Schengen-style checks alongside Gibraltar’s own border staff. Gibraltar residents will be able to cross into Spain on a residence card, while Spanish citizens can use a national identity card.
A border shaped by three centuries
Britain won Gibraltar under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. Spain has contested its sovereignty ever since, though Gibraltarians twice rejected shared sovereignty with Spain by large margins, in 1967 and 2002.
Gibraltar was part of the EU through Britain’s membership, so it left the bloc alongside the UK in 2020. Unlike Northern Ireland, it was left without any lasting arrangement covering trade or travel, leaving open the risk of a hard border with Spain.
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Around 15,000 people, most of them Spanish residents, cross the border daily to work in Gibraltar’s financial services, tourism, online gaming, construction and hospitality sectors. A hard border risked significant disruption both for Gibraltar and neighbouring Spanish communities in the Campo de Gibraltar.
The treaty establishes a customs union covering goods moving by land between Gibraltar and the EU, with Spain checking compliance with EU standards. Gibraltar will also align its indirect taxation with the EU’s VAT regime, starting at 15 per cent and converging fully within three years.
Ratification still to come
The agreement enters into provisional application on Wednesday, though full ratification will take longer. The Council adopted its proposal for the signing and provisional application on 1 July, and the text has now gone to the European Parliament for consent. Once its members approve it, the Council can adopt its decision on the agreement’s conclusion.
It is a very special feeling to see a fence come down.
— Maroš Šefčovič, Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security
Mr Šefčovič called the signing “a truly historic moment”, the result of four years of patient negotiation. “It is a very special feeling to see a fence come down,” he said, referring to the barrier that has divided Gibraltar and La Línea for more than a century.
He pointed to the people affected most directly: some 15,000 workers who cross between Spain and Gibraltar every single day, and who will no longer face a physical barrier at the frontier.
The deal followed a political agreement in June 2025, when Šefčovič, then UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Albares and Picardo first agreed the core terms. Implementation now shifts to Gibraltar’s airport and port, where Wednesday’s earliest arriving flights will provide the first real test of the new border arrangements.
