Gibraltar land border checks end under post-Brexit treaty
A new EU-UK treaty removes routine controls at Gibraltar’s land border with Spain while keeping the territory under British sovereignty.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
3 min read
Routine border controls between Spain and Gibraltar ended Wednesday under a new treaty between the European Union and the United Kingdom, changing daily travel for thousands of cross-border workers. The agreement matters most for the 15,000 people who cross the land frontier each day, a group the treaty says accounts for more than half of Gibraltar’s workforce.
The EU and UK signed the treaty in Brussels on Tuesday, according to Al Jazeera, AP and Reuters. The British government said the deal gives Gibraltar’s residents and businesses greater economic and trade certainty, preserves British sovereignty and protects the independent operation of UK military facilities.
The treaty was signed by European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, British Minister of State for Europe Stephen Doughty, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares and Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, according to Al Jazeera.
How the border will work
Under the agreement, Gibraltar residents can enter Spain using residence cards and will no longer need passport stamps, according to Al Jazeera. Spanish citizens will be able to enter Gibraltar with a government ID card.
The arrangement effectively links Gibraltar to the EU’s Schengen free-travel area, Al Jazeera reported. Schengen allows travel among 29 countries without visas for those entitled to enter the zone.
Controls will not disappear everywhere. At Gibraltar’s airport and port, British and Spanish officials will both conduct entry and exit checks, according to Al Jazeera. The system resembles paired border controls at Eurostar stations in London and Paris, where British and French officers process travelers before departure.
Travelers arriving in Gibraltar from outside Schengen, including from the UK, will be subject to the EU Entry/Exit System, according to Al Jazeera. That system, which Europe introduced in April, replaces passport stamps with biometric records such as photographs and digital fingerprints.
Before the treaty, travelers could face checks by both Gibraltarian and Spanish border agents when entering or leaving the Schengen area, Al Jazeera reported. Those controls caused long queues and had a heavy effect on people who crossed for work each day, according to the report.
Brexit left Gibraltar unresolved
Gibraltar voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum, with 96 percent of voters on the territory backing Remain, according to Al Jazeera. When the UK left the EU in 2020, Gibraltar’s relationship with the bloc was not settled.
The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which took effect in 2021, covered much of the post-Brexit relationship between Britain and the bloc, according to Al Jazeera. Gibraltar was handled through separate talks because it was outside both the EU customs union and the Schengen area.
The treaty says Gibraltar’s exclusion from the broader Brexit deal raised the risk of a hard border for workers and businesses. The EU and UK announced agreement on the main issues in 2025 after more than three and a half years of negotiations, according to Al Jazeera.
Gibraltar remains a British overseas territory, the British government said. Al Jazeera reported that Britain secured the territory under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, and that it sits at a strategic point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea, about 8 nautical miles, or 15km, from Morocco.
The treaty gives Gibraltar a status unlike other British overseas territories, according to Al Jazeera. The report said none of the UK’s 14 other overseas territories has a comparable arrangement, largely because Gibraltar has a land border with the EU.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.