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Progress on Spanish pensions, says Government
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Government statement IN FULL:
Further good progress towards a possible solution of the Spanish Pension problem was made at a meeting in Madrid on Monday of the Pensions Technical Group, under the Trilateral Forum, at which the Gibraltar Government was present, represented by Chief Secretary Ernest Montado and Director of Social Security, Mario Gomila.
Although the Gibraltar Government, and the other two participants UK and Spain, are hopeful of an agreement soon, no agreement has been reached yet. Although the position of the Gibraltar Government on paying Spain pensions is well known, the Gibraltar Government plays a full part in the negotiations, and will facilitate the reaching and implementation of an agreement.
It is hugely in the interests of all the parties that this troublesome social and political problem be solved, and that includes Gibraltar, even though the problem is not of our making. In this context, the Government notes that the Opposition is in its usual destructive, ?hope there is no progress on anything? mode. The Opposition says that it ?fails to understand why the Government of Gibraltar should think that there is anything complex about the pensions issues? and goes on, yet again, to repeat a factual history of the problem. What the Government has said is that solving the problem is complex and expensive. The Opposition needs to be pretty politically disingenuous to disagree with that.
The Government remains very hopeful that agreements, good for all sides will indeed be possible in the not too distant future, on issues such as Pensions, the expanded use of the Airport, tele-communications and frontier fluidity.
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