The European Commission said Monday that imposing taxes or toll fees at EU member-state borders would be “illegal”, as a diplomatic tug-of-war between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar escalated.<\/p>\n
“We can confirm that any tax (or) fees imposed at the border of a member state will be illegal under EU law,” Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told a news briefing in Brussels.<\/p>\n
Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo had suggested in a media interview at the start of August that a 50-euro tax would be levied for travelers entering Spain from Gibraltar.<\/p>\n
The idea provoked outrage amid a growing row around the tiny British outpost at the tip of Spain.<\/p>\n
Bailly was answering a “theoretical” question from a journalist, on the day British warship HMS Westminster docked in Gibraltar in a naval exercise coinciding with escalating tensions over sovereignty and fishing rights.<\/p>\n
The Commission’s reminder of EU law came a day after dozens of Spanish fishing boats sailed to waters around Gibraltar to demand it remove 70 concrete blocks it has dropped in their fishing grounds.<\/p>\n
Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso was to speak by telephone with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday, Bailly also said, after the EU leader held a similar conversation with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the call was threefold, he said: to “listen to what these two leaders have to say”; “to reassure that the Commission will act as necessary to ensure EU law is fully respected by both countries”; and to bang heads together to ensure a “proper dialogue” between the two capitals so as to “find an adequate solution.”<\/p>\n
The self-governing British overseas territory of Gibraltar measures just 6.8 square kilometers (2.6 square miles). It is home to about 30,000 people.<\/p>\n
Spain has imposed intense customs checks at the land border, which British Prime Minister David Cameron has described as “politically motivated”.<\/p>\n
A Commission inspection team is to travel to the border in September to verify that these border checks are legal.<\/p>\n
Source:Agence France Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Commission said Monday that imposing taxes or toll fees at EU member-state borders would be “illegal”, as a diplomatic tug-of-war between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar escalated.<\/p>\n
“We can confirm that any tax (or) fees imposed at the border of a member state will be illegal under EU law,” Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told a news briefing in Brussels.<\/p>\n
Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo had suggested in a media interview at the start of August that a 50-euro tax would be levied for travelers entering Spain from Gibraltar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}