European Commission Executive Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation José Manuel Albares and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, together with the Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo, met in Brussels earlier today.
In response to Spanish Foreign Minister, Jose Garcia-Margallo’s recent comments in the press, noting that he will not set foot in Gibraltar until there is a Spanish flag flying on the Rock, the Government has insisted that the comments belong to a different era ‘when there was no respect for human rights or recognition that different people can have different views and still co-exist in peace’
A statement notes, ‘his threat of taking “unilateral measures” and his reference to “permanent conflicts” between Spain and Gibraltar are out of place between two countries that are part of the European Union and that are supposed to contribute together to the cause of western defence.
Commenting on the Opposition’s recent statement regarding the Fishing Agreement, the Government has said that it is obvious that the new Leader of the Opposition, Daniel Feetham enjoys arguments, which go round in circles.
A statement released yesterday adds, ‘the problem with circular arguments of this kind is that the blame usually ends up squarely at the start of the chain of events with those who made the accusations in the first place.
In this case the origin lies with the fishing agreement of 1999 which was entered into by his party in Government and which is the root cause of the issue that Gibraltar faces today. The issue is now to excert Gibraltar’s jurisdiction over a group of people who have been used to flouting the law for more than ten years.
In a recently published article in the journal of Geomorphology, Dr. Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum explores the possibility that a ‘lost world’ formed part of Gibraltar, as caves such as Vanguard and Gorham’s once faced a coastal shelf with a shoreline as 5 km away, at times.
Dr. Finlayson notes that, the caves hold a unique archive of fauna and flora, in the form of fossils, charcoal and pollen, helping environmental reconstruction of now- submerged shelf landscapes. In addition, a 300-metre dune complex on the East side of the Rock and other geological features complement the biological picture.
The Government has rejected the philosophical ruminations of Shadow Environment Minister Jaime Netto that were present in the Party’s recent statement on Ape Management.
The Government insists that the Opposition have to understand that they cannot pretend that the world started on 9 December 2011 and that they were not in Government before.