Nov 11 - 615 Frontier Complaints Received
The Government has this week forwarded a further 200 complaints against the Frontier delays, to the European Commission. This brings the number of complaints received by the recently set up Government frontier complaints website up to 615. The complaints follow a two-week period of stringent Customs checks to pedestrians, causing extended queues for those walking into Spain.
The latest batch of complaints come from seventeen different European nationalities, including UK, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Italian, French, Swedish, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Irish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Austrian, Portuguese, Swiss and Finnish. There are also complaints from non-European citizens from Brazil and the United States of America.
The Government also notes that the frontierqueue.gi website received over 240,000 visits in October, with 120,841 of them coming from Spain. Speaking on the matter, Deputy Chief Minister DR. Garcia noted, ‘ this new technology is proving very useful to ordinary people in Gibraltar and in Spain who want to complain on-line about the disproportionate checks being carried out by the Spanish frontier authorities at Spain’s border with Gibraltar. The fact that there is a wide spread of EU nationals from many different countries who have taken the time to fill in a form to complain about the experience that they have suffered is very significant. It shows that they too consider that their right to free movement across an EU border is being undermined by Spain’.
Commenting on the website, The Deputy Chief Minister added, ‘the website is also a very useful tool, not just for complaining, but for people who want to monitor the state of the frontier at a given moment in time before they decide whether or not to cross over to the other side. It is important to bear in mind that it is not only people stuck in a queue who are entitled to complain, you can also do so if you intended to go into Spain or come into Gibraltar on business or for pleasure and have been prevented from doing so by the actions of the Spanish Government.’
‘Spain should understand that this abuse at the frontier is out of place in the Europe in which we live and it must come to an end’.
