How to protect our sovereign waters: STOP illegal fishing and incursions

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 Monday, December 3, 2018 - 11:39 Leo Olivero

PART 1: EU leaders last week at a special Brexit summit formally agreed to back Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal package, which now faces furious opposition in the British Parliament. 

Sanchez Beating Gibraltar Sovereignty Drum

Last weekend’s summit was overshadowed by the ‘Gibraltar sovereignty drum beating’ by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

 Although he made a complete fool of himself while embarrassing his country playing political ‘clever clogs’ as he made what were disturbing statements that the UK and EU had agreed to his demands for guarantees over the status of Gibraltar in future negotiations.

‘Sanchez claiming the so-called agreement reached allowed Spain to talk about the “co-sovereignty” of Gibraltar in the coming years’.

The Gibraltar co-sovereignty claims by Pedro Sanchez were vehemently refuted several times by the British Prime Minister not only when in Brussels, but even in the UK parliament and also by our own Chief Minister several times.

The intense talk and hotly disputed rejections on ‘Gibraltar and Sovereignty’ demonstrated what many locally, naively believed that with a Spanish socialist government in Madrid, the sovereignty issue was probably a thing of the past ‘THEY WERE WRONG’.

Protecting Our Sovereignty in Every Aspect is Vital For Our Survival

For countless years Panorama has championed the vitally important significant point that ‘Protecting Our Sovereignty in Every Aspect is Vital to Our Survival’.

The fact is ‘Gibraltar has miserably failed to protect its sovereign waters’ certainly, not with the same determination as Spanish politicians who wish to grab hold of it.

Gibraltar unfortunately, is earning the unenviable reputation of closing an eye, and, often, both, to countless incidents that for an increasing number of months has seen more blatant acts of illegal fishing and incursions by commercial Spanish fishing boats, and then the ever present acts of Spanish state vessels making incursions into British Gibraltar Territorial Waters (BGTW) a situation which has generally intensified to every day incidents.

It is irresponsible and you could say professional negligence that the Royal Gibraltar Police as lead enforcement agency fails to adopt a robust and effective enforcement policy. One, which govern laws in local waters, but deliberately it seems, the RGP fails to enforce them, at a time where sovereignty is high on the national agenda, particularly with Spain.

03-12-18 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR