Following the letter from the EC confirming Scotland would have to apply to rejoin the EU, James Hallwood looks back on another woeful week for Alex Salmond.
Following the letter to the Lords European Union committee from the European Commission confirming an independent Scotland would have to apply to rejoin the EU, James Hallwood looks at the pitfalls that lie ahead for Alex Salmond
The letter flies in the face of the SNP’s long held position Scotland would automatically remain a member and also brings into question, once more, the reason for their apparent lack of legal advice on this critical issue. While the letter awaits formal ratification it is in line with previous advice that seceding from the UK would make Scotland a ‘third country’ outside of the EU.
This would mean having to re-apply for membership via the criteria of Article 49 of the Lisbon Treaty – i.e. with the unanimous support of the member states. Given Spain, amongst others, has already voiced concerns about the precedent this would set, there can be no guarantee Scotland would be admitted back into the European Union.
As the framer of this referendum, the Scottish government has a duty to provide the pros, cons, knowns and unknowns of Scottish independence – wishful thinking is simply not enough; the Scottish people deserve the facts.
An independent Scotland could in theory re-join the EU but would not automatically be a member – therefore the details of a potential settlement are crucial to the decision of the Scottish electorate. The European Commission has stated the remnants of the UK would maintain EU membership and thus all of the opt-outs, redlines and rebate successive British governments have secured over the years.
Assuming Scotland is accepted into the EU, in line with other new accession countries, she would not have any of these and would therefore be expected to join Schengen and the euro – again contrary to what the SNP has set out.
Furthermore, the Council of the European Union weights votes of member states by their population size. Britain currently joins France and Germany at the top with 29 votes – but an independent Scotland would likely join other countries with a comparative population, like Slovakia, with 7 votes. It would not just be losing the seat at the UN Security Council that would lessen Scotland’s voice in the world.
There is, of course, another scenario – Scotland is not admitted into the European Union.
This isn’t as unlikely as it sounds, as accession requires unanimous support from all current members. When one considers the numerous secession movements in Europe one can easily see how the precedent of independence followed by EU membership and investment would worry some countries – it takes only one member to veto Scotland’s application – or at least negotiate a very unattractive package to an acceding Scotland.
Even now, five EU countries continue to refuse recognition of an independent Kosovo. Four years on, Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain remain opposed. They present a multitude of reasons but all share the common factor of separatist movements in their own territory. Indeed the very issue of the precedent it would set to Catalonia or the Basque regions was raised in the Spanish parliament in argument against recognition.
Last year, Catalonian voters gave a majority to separatist parties. These parties seek a referendum on independence from Spain followed by EU membership. The similarities to Scotland are obvious, so much so that Salmond refused to comment on Catalan independence, well aware Spain could likely be the stumbling block to his plans.
The SNP is also a member of the European Free Alliance grouping in the European Parliament – with separatist parties from 14 other states. These represent just some of the many nationalist movements from across Europe that look to Scotland as a model to follow. A model that states as diverse as Belgium and Bulgaria have an interest in preventing succeed.
Time and time again the SNP has made statements on EU membership that are contradicted by the British government, international law experts, member states and now the EU itself. Salmond has a responsibility to make clear the price of Scottish independence; the onus is on him to present the risks so the Scottish people can make an informed decision.
The principles of unionism and separatism should outweigh the benefits of EU membership. But presenting a false future for Scotland does the ‘yes’ campaign no credit. An unfavourable settlement or no EU membership at all torpedoes Salmond’s vision for Scotland. Scots should know that leaving the UK could mean they are, quite literally, going it alone.
See also:
• Another blow for Salmond – Scottish businesses say No to Independence – December 7th, 2012
• It’s official: Independent Scotland would have to reapply for EU membership – December 7th, 2012
• David Miliband: Scotland can’t just “leave the UK on Friday, join the EU on Monday” – November 24th, 2012
• Legal ding-dong on EU advice as Clegg wades in to Holyrood scrap – November 2nd, 2012
• Advice? What advice? Salmond finds himself in more hot water over EU ‘lies’ – October 29th, 2012
71 Responses to “Comment: Salmond, Scotland and the EU – time for the first minister to finally come clean”
Hen Broon
Q. What did Labour do for Scotland in 13 years in government?
A. They increased the gap between the rich and the poor. ” I am intensely relaxed bout people becoming filthy rich.” Mandelson.
douglas clark
James Hallwood,
Perhaps as the author of this op-ed you would care to comment on the inaccuaracies that it contains?
I can, to some extent, sympathise on the grounds that you actually have to dig quite a bit to find out that the story going around is, ahem, less than accurate. Corrections are not readily available and it must have sounded so appealingly authentic to justify the post.
Unfortunately, it is mince.
It would be good to feel that we were all on a level playing field, here.
Because, independenistas have to persuade people who read sites like this that, if you live in Scotland and quite like the settlement that we have, then you just can’t vote Labour and a vote for independence would be quite smart.
Lamont – that’s the Labour Party Leader in Scotland or some such panjandram title – is already in full Thatcherite mode with her ‘end to universality’ and ‘means testing’, the former being explicit, the latter implicit.
For that nonsense to be effective, it will not attack the millionaires alone, it will have to attack people on less than median incomes. That is the reality of a ‘means testing’ environment that pays for the people, employed by the state, whose jobs add nothing to the economy and might be persuaded that they are lackeys of a socialist bureaucracy whose sole intent is it’s own survival. Until, of course, the Tories hand it over to the private sector who will cut through the crap and just cut everyone’s benefits. Make obscene profits and run away to a tax haven.
If you want that, vote Labour in Scotland. Because that is what you are promised. That’s what Labour says it wants.
A more general point about what we have now as a Labour Party in Scotland is that they have been hung out to dry by their own leaderships, remember the people that earn a lot of money by being MEPs, MP,s and MSP’s?
There is an old joke that every scandal that embraces the Conservatives is to do with sex, and every scandal that embraces the Labour Party is to do with money. Because you always want what you haven’t got.
I guess it is a tad superceeded by Tories chasing expenses and such like, but it still has some validity. The comment above about Peter Madelson being relaxed about money probably answers the question about how we have become so rich at the top and so poor at the bottom. This is something that hangs around Labour as a badge of shame. At least I hope it does on a site called ‘Left Foot Forward’.
There are very clever brains in the Labour Party, not least in the Fabian Society, but they have not, (cannot?) address the issue of triangulation where one that works for ‘swing seats’ in South East England just looks like a complete sell out of any socialist values whatsoever elsewhere.
That form of party politics, a betrayal of principle, is why Labour is teetering on the brink of being a busted flush in Scotland, and I suspect, in the North of England too.
We are lucky to have a genuinely social democratic party to vote for. If it were anything like the caricature that Newsbot 9 imagined it to be I would run a hundred miles to get away from it. It would behove your chum to understand how civic nationalism differs from the shit the BNP spout.
It stands, inter alia, for:
No nukes
Universality of care for everyone that needs it
A Green policy. Non nuke, sustainable from tide and wind and the other resources we already have.
Free education to tertiary level at least
An NHS free at the point of delivery and not exploited by the private sector, which I understand you are already losing,
Something a tad better than PFI,
Oh!, and a non-privatised water and sewerage system. We always forget about that one.
It is extremely odd that people in England don’t want or vote for the same things.
People up here, and in the North of England appear to be a lot more sympathetic to asylum seekers than the South East. I would doubt any independent government in Scotland would operate a system where the state deliberately hurt families. That is just another example, along with ATOS and the rest that makes me, really, really want to leave. And no, I am not at all happy that ATOS are providing IT facilities to the Commonwealth games. As far as I am concerned they can rot in hell.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/benefits-clawback-firm-atos-call-1442310
Best wishes with your blog.
Dorothy Devine
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Dorothy Devine
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Dorothy Devine
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