Brexit in Gibraltar

There has been a lot of Brexit talks about the UK-EU landborder on the island of Ireland over the last years. This is understandable.

However, UK has another landborder with EU – namely Gibraltar. The Gibraltar-EU Spaon border is from a strictly a Customs technical perspective one of the lost interesting borders of Europe, even the world. In a very short border distance there is all the chaplengesnof a border, goods transports, cars and motorbikes, travellers (walking), air, cruisers, sailboats and freight ships. There are certainly also other complications and challenges as well on this specific border.

I was invited as international Customs expert to Gibraltar Government and Gibraltar Customs to discuss Brexit and I have been in Gibraltar Monday-Tuesday this week for those discussions. I have worked with Gibraltar Government before and it is always a pleasure to visit and interact with the very competent Government officials and the Customs administration.

I was also asked to yesterday deliver an interactive workshop session for Customs Service Providers at the University of Gibralta.

In the afternoon I delivered a Key Note Speech to Gibraltar Private Sector and business at a seminar organized by Gibraltar Government, Gibraltar Customs, the International Association of AEO, Customs and Logistics and University of Gibraltar.

We had a full house with more than 120 private sector leaders in the beautiful University building.

The seminar was very well organized and a great success.

Deputy Chief Minister Garcia opened the event, Collector John Rodriguez made an introductory remark and ghen I held a 90 minutes speech and presentation follwed by an interactive Q and A session. We recoved many relavant and good questions.

After the long day with great meetings we finalized this visit with a dinner at the hotel, together with Customs Collector John Rodriguez, Laura Pujol from the International Association for AEO, Customs and Logistics.

I hope to be able to return soon to Gibraltar. I am dedicated to help out with the next steps of the process.