Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has said it could take years for an independent Scotland to be integrated into the EU, as all 28 countries would need to unanimously agree.
"It's clear that if one part of a state separates, it converts itself into a third territory with respect to the EU," he said, pointing to treaties and remarks by EU leaders. "They can ask to be integrated and begin a process that could take years. In the case of Spain it took eight years." Rajoy has previously suggested he would block Scotland's entry into the EU. With the referendum in Scotland only hours away, the strength of the yes campaign has buoyed separatists in Catalonia and put the Spanish government on the defensive. Madrid argues that unlike Scotland, any type of vote for independence in Catalonia would violate the country's 1978 constitution, which states that such issues must be decided by all Spaniards. Rajoy's remarks to parliament on Wednesday came in response to a question from Aitor Esteban, a Basque Nationalist party MP, who asked: "If the yes campaign wins tomorrow's Scottish referendum, will your government facilitate the integration of Scotland in the European Union?" Rajoy said he had spoken to representatives from the 28 countries in the EU and that "everyone in Europe thinks that these processes are tremendously negative because they generate economic recessions and more poverty for everyone". They act like a "torpedo to the vulnerabilities of the EU, which was created to integrate states, not to fragment them. Strong states are what's needed today," he said. Rajoy sought to draw a clear line between the secession movements in Scotland and Catalonia. "There are many differences between the process of Scotland and that of here. The main one is that Scotland has virtually no powers compared to Catalonia and other autonomous regions."
On Tuesday, Spain's foreign minister, José Manuel García Margallo, said his government would do everything it could to block any sort of referendum from taking place in Catalonia. "Each and every Spaniards is the owner of each and every square centimetre of the country," he said. On Wednesday, he said Scottish secession would be a catastrophe. "It would start a process of Balkanisation that nobody in Europe wants," he said. Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, has long argued that it would be possible for the country to renegotiate membership of the EU from within. In a speech on the subject in April, he said it would be absurd to deny the people of Scotland entry. "The Scottish government recognises that continued membership of the EU will require negotiations on the specific terms. That is only right and proper, but these negotiations will be completed within the 18-month period between a yes vote in September and achieving independence in March 2016," he said. "Scotland will ask for continued membership on the basis of 'continuity of effect'." "Five and a quarter million people ceasing to be EU citizens against their will … is more than absurd. There is simply no legal basis in the EU treaties for any such proposition. And it is against the founding principles of the European Union."
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Former Italian prime minister says yes vote could lead to decline of EU
Enrico Letta, the former Italian prime minister, told the BBC’s World Service that a yes vote in Scotland could lead to the decline of the EU.
The ‘yes’ in Scotland will help those who want, in the referendum of 2017, to take the UK out.
The UK is one of the pillars of the single market, of big international trade agreements and is so important in Europe that the consequence will be maybe the start of the true decline of the European Union.
The sequence, the consequences of tomorrow’s referendum, could be very, very dangerous.
How will it go tomorrow? Nobody really knows. Both campaigns are supremely confident, both can point to polls that show them narrowly ahead. Both have “invisible advantages”. YES probably enjoys the support of thousands of first time voters; NO thinks that it leads comfortably on early postal votes. The NO people are satisfied that they have a “quiet” vote motivated by reason rather than passion, and that with every new outrage perpetrated by YES extremists they gain yet more silent support. One YES person put it to me that the people who tend to break toward NO are the old and English-born.
Personally, I think that YES might indeed enjoy a slight edge. Due to the following factors:
1. Enthusiasm. Get off the train at Glasgow and you’re struck by the presence of the YES vote: posters, stickers, t-shirts, campaigners. They have a much better operation and seem better at exciting their own people. Things are quieter in Edinburgh, but the difference is only a matter of degree. In my first 24 hours in Glasgow, I counted just one NO poster. Although, to be fair, this might be a reflection of the ability of YES to intimidate people into silence. One voter who works in a bank told me that he held off putting up a NAW poster in his window for fear of attracting vandalism. Others have put up YES posters just to keep the wretched canvassers away.
2. Registration. Historically, turnout in Scottish elections is low – in about the mid-sixties. But this time around some 97 per cent of Scots have registered. Now, why would someone go to the effort to register for the first time? To vote negatively (NO) or to vote positively (YES)? A local journalist put it to me that many of those new voters will be working-class Scots motivated by national passion. It’s unlikely that they’re fired up by David Cameron, Ed Miliband or the prospect of Devo-Max (which sounds like a reunited Eighties pop group).
The big question is, if Scotland votes yes, how do we secure all of our borders, when trains run from Scotland to the rest of the UK? Salmond has already said he wants more immigrants. However, immigrants will want to come to the UK not stay in Scotland, when stark realisation dawns and all hell breaks loose. There may even be civil war, who knows?
Well done. Not only are you about to screw your own economy, you're going to screw economies beyond your own borders.
Given that iScotland is going to be massively reliant on the goodwill of various nation states (whose economies are going to be negatively affected by independence) to get it's own economy into shape, I'm not sure such evident delight in the fact is very clever.
The thing is, the UK economy is so much bigger than Scotland's. It will be able to roll with the punches. Scotland is likely to go down like a boxer with a glass jaw.
The campaigns cannot both be supremely confident unless one or both are idiots, given both are relying on the invisible advantages as you term them, which by definition they cannot prove. It would be foolish in the extreme for them to think that because their private polling says they are doing fine they can discount the potential invisible or poll advantages of the other side.
For what it's worth I think Yes are more likely as people registering to vote for the first time to give Westminster a kicking seems more likely than masses of shy No voters, and that's the biggest factor of those you list I think. I hope it doesn't work out this way, but if the polls only give a narrow No lead, I think Yes have the edge going into it. No Yes supporter will fail to vote tomorrow, but plenty of No supporters or waverers might, especially given the confusion of new powers being offered and upset in England over it.
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