There is Andorra too. Lets not kid ourselves it's about duty free. Lots of cheap tobacco smuggled into the UK too, shall we slow down out borders as well

The difference is that the UK (Andorra) is in the EU Customs Union and you can bring in a bootload of booze and fags from another member state and claim it's for personal use.

Gibraltar prefers to remain outside, and has the same duty-free restrictions as other non-EU countries: 200 cigs, 1 litre of spirits etc. Therefore you only have to bring two cartons of cigarettes across the border to Spain and you are a officially a smuggler.

I'd genuinely like to know Fred's view on why Gibraltar doesn't join the EU customs union?

What is the difference between someone moving a bootload of fags and booze across Europe and someone taking more tha 200 fags over the frontier/ answer none they are both smugglers, although one will claim not to be.

Andorra is duty free Gibraltar is not, the tobacco taken across the land frontier by Spaniards classed as smugglers by Spain is duty paid in Gibraltar.

Spain has limited the number of cigarettes Spaniards living within 15 kms of the border to 80.

Their are only two areas of EU legislation that do not apply to Gib, one is VAT but remember there is duty.
The other is the Common Agricultural Fund, Gib has no agriculture.

Andorra is still listed as a Tax Haven Gib is not.

Saw this on another forum

I was reading an article early this week that said that sales of cigarettes were down in Spain, in 2012 , by 2000 million packets. Some of this could be due to people stopping but the vast majority is thought to be illegal smuggling. Unfortunately Gibraltar only sold 140 million packs of cigarettes in 2012. So even if ALL the cigarettes sold in Gibraltar were smuggled into Spain this only represents 7% of the missing amount ! Where's the other 93% coming from ?

They would be looking elsewhere for the smuggling if they truly wanted to do anything about it rather than just cause havoc & aggravation with Gibraltar .
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Todos con Lorca .

No-one thinks it is about tobacco smuggling - that's just an excuse they use to cause chaos at the border. The suggestion is that if Gibraltar were to join the Customs Union - and there seems little reason why they don't - then that particular excuse would go away. OK they would probably find another one but it can't hurt.

Don't for one minute think that smuggling is a one way thing at the frontier.
Goods are smuggled from Spain into Gib to such an extent that businesses in La Linea and other Campo towns are going bust due to the lack of recent trade with Gibraltar residents ( not all this trade will be smuggled but a fair percentage is )

Exactly.

But there is a good reason why Gibraltar doesn't want to join the Customs Union: they just love all those tourists!

Well that's all very well but the current situation surely must put off lots of tourists mustn't it? TBH there's not much that is cheaper in Gib these days anyway. Tobacco and fuel yes, but last time I was there not much else.

Why should they join? Gibraltar doesn't receive billions of Euro from the CAP etc.

There is a lot for tourists to see in Gibraltar, more than the same size pueblo in Spain. Pity most spend their time buying fags on Main St.

Well, the suggestion is that if they do it might go some way towards solving the border queue problem by removing the tobacco smuggling excuse. Of course it could be that Gibraltar doesn't actually mind the problems on the border - in which case you are right - why should they join?

We all know things won't change at the border so it's all hypothetical anyway. If it wasn't the cigs it would be something else. I realise some of you in Spain want to go down the appeasement line, even to the point of handing back the Rock. Would make life a bit easier wouldn't it

Doesn't make any difference to me but I do feel sorry for the people who are affected directly including many of my friends who have to cross every day for work and of course the thousands of Spanish in La Linea who do the same. I don't know what will ease the problems this time - TBH I suspect that nothing that Gibraltar could do would change anything and maybe they don't want to anyway. Maybe it will take a change of government in Madrid.

If sales were really down by 2,000,000,000 packets, every man, woman and child in Spain would be buying 40 less packets this year than last. Not very likely, even in this land of nicotine addicts.

I found the article this comes from and what it actually says is that sales FELL to 2,671 million packets in 2012, 40% less than in 2008.
http://spanishnewstoday.com/gibralta...l#.UooZosRwqSo

The article is rightly critical of the over-zealous border controls but also points out that Gibraltar tobacconists are only too happy to cash in on the smuggling game.

The Spanish aren't just concentrating on Gibraltar. They are cracking down on other ports of entry, such as Valencia:
http://www.642100.com/spanish-police...ed-from-china/

The Rock is British, there isn't any doubt about that. But the Treaty of Utrecht did not include the land where the airport now is, nor the territorial waters.

What I would like to see, is for flag-waving politicians on all sides to stop using it as a diversion to boost their popularity, and work towards cooperation. There's no reason why the airport and the customs house shouldn't be jointly controlled, for example. We're all part of the EU, for heavens sake.

Which brings me to wonder, what will happen to Gib if the UK pulls out?

But don't most of the tourists come on cruise ships?