Scotland's bid to join the EU

EDINBURGH, SEPTEMBER 15th 2012 (AFP).
Scotland’s leader, Alex Salmond, insisted today that his country will join the EU shortly after its formal separation from the United Kingdom, perhaps as early as January 2013. Salmond was responding to accusations that in a bid to ensure victory in last Friday’s knife-edge vote on independence, he had deliberately misled the public about the ease of staying in the EU. Nervous voters were swayed by Salmond’s eve-of-poll claim that other European leaders had assured him that an independent Scotland would be given a quick path to EU membership.

This morning British Prime Minister David Cameron conceded that Scotland would leave the United Kingdom. “I respect the choice of the Scottish people, though I regret it with equal sincerity,” he said.

“We will do all we can to ensure that the negotiations for separation run smoothly.” Cameron added that Scotland’s future relationship with the EU was far from clear. But Michael Russell, Scotland’s external affairs minister and front-runner to be its first Brussels commissioner, argued that all Scotland needed was a special protocol amending the treaties to take account of the unique circumstances of a member-state splitting. “Our membership of the Union will be automatic: Scotland’s accession adds no new territory or people to the EU, and the Scots already enjoy EU citizenship,” he said. Diplomatic sources say EU governments are still struggling to absorb the political and legal ramifications of Scottish independence. Many worry that the Scottish example could trigger a wave of separatist nationalism across Europe. The Spanish government fears that breakaway movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country will be emboldened. "We refused to recognise Kosovo when it split from Serbia in 2008 and we will never agree to Scotland becoming a full EU member,” said Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Belgium's newly elected government is also reluctant to give Scotland a quick path to membership: Flanders’ regional government has announced its own referendum on independence next April.

Other countries that fret about secessionist movements, such as Hungary, Cyprus and Slovakia, are also likely to veto Scotland’s bid for ‘automatic’ membership. That would force Scotland to make a formal application to become a candidate for membership. Salmond may then experience further frustrations. Austria, for example, alarmed at the steady progress of the EU’s accession negotiations with Turkey, has insisted that it will not allow any further countries into the EU without a referendum.

Indeed, Salmond’s prior assurances of quick EU membership appear to have come from only one EU leader: President Nicolas Sarkozy. Salmond’s appeal to the ‘auld alliance’ that had linked Scotland and France for many centuries, and the chance to embarrass Cameron, prevailed over French fears of a renewed threat from militant Corsican nationalists.

Germany’s Angela Merkel said this afternoon that Scotland could join the EU at the same time as Croatia and Iceland in 2014. But she added that “an EU with 30 members or more is too large for the current institutions and we would not want those three to join without a new institutional treaty”. Cameron, however, has already promised to veto any new EU treaty – which poses serious difficulties for Scotland’s ambitions. Paavo Lipponen, the EU president, has convened an emergency summit next week to decide how to handle Scottish independence.

At today’s press conference Salmond said that Scotland would style itself as “Europe's Singapore”, a dynamic, export-orientated economy with a robust financial services sector. But a recent report from the London-based Centre for European Reform argues that “Scotland’s foreign policy is likely to resemble a cross between Norway’s and Ireland’s: like Norway, the country has strong energy interests and a forceful fisheries lobby. Like Ireland, it is likely to have low corporation taxes and eschew military alliances.”

Few had given much thought to the Scottish question on the eve of Britain’s 2010 general election, when the Conservatives triumphed over a jaded Labour government. But after the Tories failed to pick up a single seat in Scotland, where the nationalists scored an overwhelming win, Salmond had claimed a mandate to pursue independence. During the referendum campaign, Cameron called for a No to Scottish independence. Yet it is not only the conspiracy theorists who believe that the nationalists could not have won the referendum with some behind the scenes help from Tories; the disappearance of Scotland’s parliamentary seats now makes it virtually impossible for Labour to win a majority at Westminster.