Jun 21 - Chamber Urges Members To Vote “IN”
The Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to all of its members urging them to vote “Remain” in the forthcoming referendum this Thursday. The letter which has been sent to the directors and managers of each Chamber member also urges Chamber members to encourage each of their employees to vote if they are eligible to do so.
In the letter the Chamber says:
“The board firmly supports the Stronger In campaign for the UK and Gibraltar to remain a member of the European Union. The alternative is quite simply, a leap in the dark.”
The letter says that the EU has been good for Gibraltar over the last 43 years and in the last 20 years in particular. It then goes on to give details of some of the advantages of EU membership which have benefitted Gibraltar directly. The first of these has been having access to a market of more than 500 million people. The Chamber says this has helped Gibraltar’s financial services sector to develop and in turn has created many jobs in Gibraltar.
The Chamber adds that another benefit has been having an open frontier with Spain which has meant that people with jobs in Gibraltar can live in Spain and people who live in Spain can work in Gibraltar,
“Each weekday half of Gibraltar’s workforce crosses the border to get to work. Of the 12,000 people who cross the frontier around 7,000 are Spanish and the remaining 5,000 are other Europeans. Without this open frontier many businesses in Gibraltar would not have a workforce.”
The letter, which is signed on behalf of the board of Directors of the Chamber, says:
“We hope that you will vote to remain. We believe that the future prosperity of Gibraltar depends on it.”
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