European Union team to investigate Gibraltar dispute next week

The European Union will send a team to investigate the border dispute between Spain and Gibraltar next week, Britain’s Foreign Office said yesterday.
Officials from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, will visit the British overseas territory on 25 September to look into what caused a summer of tension at the frontier and that has strained relations between Madrid and London.
Spain lays claim to the territory, which has a population of 30,000, which it ceded to Britain by treaty 300 years ago.
The team will “assess the border controls, free movement of people and goods, including fraud and smuggling”, the Foreign Office said, citing an EU document given to its officials in Brussels.
They will also check Spanish complaints that Gibraltar impeded its fishing boats by dropping concrete blocks into disputed waters off the territory. Gibraltar said it had created an artificial reef in the Mediterranean to protect fish stocks.“We welcome this confirmation that a monitoring mission will be sent,” a Foreign Office spokesman said