15 december 2012, scotland the knave

Whilst english politicians race towards the extreme of who can get the country out the european union quickest, the scots head the opposite way. Hence its government's hostile reaction to the european commission president's restatement that an independent scotland would have to apply to join the eu. To some, this shows the snp's political immaturity, as they are found out for not doing their homework. I'm not so sure. Yes, it is clear in the treaties that it is a union of defined member states, and if a new one comes along, from within or without, there is an established process they need to go through to join. And yes there is a precedent, of greenland leaving when it won independence from denmark in 1974. However, this is the institutional view, which is also that of the current member states, and of course madrid and brussels, to mention but two, have the very strongest reasons to avoid a precedent. They want any change to be as painful as possible, and of course have a veto on anything in this area at all. There are though grounds to consider "internal enlargement" differently. Also, the one institution that has consistently not always taken the institutional view, and also the most important one, the european court of justice (see court in the act), has yet to opine. It has strong form for actually looking at the law, when it would find that exactly who the member state is ("the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland", article 52(1)) would be rather murky should scotland leave, there being some weight to that act effectively dissolving that particular member state or at least the "great britain" part of it. The ecj does not always side with the big member states, and if things ever actually got there, I suspect the threat of its deliberations would be enough to enforce a pragmatic solution, along the lines of accession talks taking place in parallel to independence, such that the transition was seamless to scotland joining as the 28th member the day it left its british union. Those years would of course see fun discussions on schengen, regional funds and the euro amongst other matters, but once independence was an established fact, there are pragmatic answers to those questions. Having said all that, I don't expect scotland to vote yes, although the whole process will help them gain more local powers from whitehall, which shows they have a rather better strategy than the rest of us.