Brexit: the European Union excludes the Malvin Islands …

The trade deal that the UK and the EU signed a few days after the completion of Brexit has left out the UK overseas territories which will lose any special tariff treatment in their relations with the mainland community. The Falkland Islands are part of this group and are said to be severely affected. The Argentine government had asked the European Union authorities that, in the context of post-Brexit negotiations, the islands be considered as disputed territory rather than as British.

In this context, Foreign Minister Felipe Solá stressed through his Twitter account that “finally, the post-Brexit agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom did not include the Malvinas Islands, Georgia of the South and the South Sandwich. all the forums and meetings that we have had in 2020 with European foreign ministers. “

Similarly, Falklands Secretary Daniel Filmus said: “The non-integration of the Malvinas Islands into the Brexit deal has been one of the issues that Foreign Minister Felipe Solá has raised in the conversations with Borrell and with all foreign ministers Europeans he spoke to this year, raising Argentina’s position regarding the validity of UN resolution 2065 and the existence of a controversy over the exercise sovereignty which, according to our rights and our Constitution, corresponds to Argentina. The EU’s decision not to include the Falklands respects this point of view. “

The EU and London reached an agreement on their future trade relationship the day before yesterday, December 25, to avoid a brutal Brexit impacting the economies affected by the coronavirus, just days before the December 31 deadline that the parties had accepted. given when the country left the bloc, last January. The legal text of the new treaty, which has more than 1,200 pages, was presented yesterday by the European negotiator, Michel Barnier, to the ambassadors of the 27 countries that make up the community, who will have to analyze it in detail over the coming days.(See separately page 25)

The deal would officially enter into force in 2021 after the parliaments of each EU member country vote on its approval. It turned out that the EU had to give up some positions it claimed from the start of the negotiations, but managed to establish a trading relationship without quotas or fees provided that London assumes a level playing field on competition and other points.

Those who were excluded from the trade privileges granted by the British Crown were the overseas territories with which the monarchy has “special ties”, as the letter of the agreement itself clearly shows. The Falkland Islands are one of that group of countries that have been left out, along with Anguilla, Bermuda, the Virgin Islands, Georgia and the South Sandwich, among others. Directly, the agreement does not consider them to be English territory. In his Christmas message to islanders, Prime Minister Johnson warned that the EU was “absolutely uncompromising in excluding the majority of overseas territories from trade talks this year” and clarified that the islanders “did not been forgotten or neglected. “

The limit in the scope of the trade agreement will strongly affect the economy of the island on which Argentina holds the flags of national sovereignty high, and whose population largely lives off the squid that European – mainly Spanish – fishermen. are fishing. in the waters around it. So far, the product has entered precisely through Spain without paying any tariff. After the signing of the post-Brexit trade agreement, things will change: to enter the EU, squid obtained from the waters of the Falklands will have to pay customs duties.