Independence movements in Europe

Dr Russell Foster

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining for tonight’s discussion on Independence Movements in Europe. I’m your host for the evening here at Chatham House. My name is Dr Russell Foster, a Lecturer in British and European Politics Education at King’s College London. And we are honoured to be joined by three international experts on discussions of new independence movements in Europe.

Now, in Europe, in recent years, we’ve seen that Catalonia has been leading the call for independence, but Catalonia is far from unique in the European context. There are many others who are wishing to redraw the map of the continent to reflect new [audio cuts out – 02:08] political priorities for the communities and societies of Europe. Territories as large as Scotland and Catalonia and communities as small as the Faroe Islands and Denmark, where we’ve got no fewer than four political parties who are seeking full independence. And new movements within older states within Europe, we have the New Flemish Alliance in Belgium, be it Corsican independence and movements for Bavarian independence in the Republic of Germany.

Now, in the aftermath of the global coronavirus pandemic, we have seen calls for independence, which were being side-lined in the global emergency of the pandemic. These calls for independence movements – for independence, are starting to return and re – and are once again, becoming the dominant issue in Spanish, Catalan, Scottish and British politics. Negotiations have resumed between Madrid and Catalonia and in June, Pedro Sánchez, the Prime Minister of Spain, issued pardons for those nine Catalan leaders who had been jailed for sedition against the Spanish state. And yet, the Catalan Government is pushing for a binding referendum for independence.

And meanwhile, here in the United Kingdom, we see that in Scotland, support for independence has, once again, become a major political issue in the aftermath of the pandemic and Brexit. Now, depending on who you talk to, support for Scottish independence is either rising or falling, or perhaps just stagnating. But we’ve seen that the successful coalition of the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Greens means that an independence referendum is, once again, on the agenda in Edinburgh.

So, this is what we’re going to be discussing this evening. So, to give a very, very brief background on who we are, my name’s Dr Russell Foster. I have been at King’s since 2016, researching the re-emergence of national identities in Europe and the emergence of new national identities. And in one of those strange coincidences that only happens in academia, just yesterday, I was teaching the undergraduate students about the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and just last week, we were looking at Catalan nationalism. So, in what better context can I introduce tonight’s three panellists?

Firstly, we’re honoured to be joined by Alyn Smith of the Scottish National Party. Member of Parliament for Stirling since 2019 and since February 2020, Alyn has served as the SNP’s Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs. And prior to this, Alyn was a Member of the European Parliament for Scotland from 2004 to 2019. So, a very long pedigree in international politics.

We are also honoured to be joined by Minister Victòria Alsina, the Catalan Minister for Foreign Affairs. A Lecturer at New York University and Head Researcher at the Governance Laboratory, Victòria has worked with the Harvard Kennedy School, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. She’s also worked for the European Union, for the World Bank, the Council of Europe and the United Nations, and I was also delighted to discover that both myself and the Minister were once Marie Curie International Fellows, so a nice connection there.

And last, but by no means least, we are equally honoured to be joined by Professor Marc Weller, Chair of International Law and International Constitutional Studies at the University of Cambridge. The former Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Marc has served as a Senior Mediation Expert for the United Nations and as a Counsel in the International Criminal Court of Justice, specialising in constitutional international dispute settlement and peace negotiations in constitution contexts.

So, these are the three magnificent panellists we’ve got for tonight’s discussion. Hand over to each of them in turn for a five-minute introduction on the role and the future of independence movements within Europe. So, I think we’ll go alphabetically by surname, so, I will hand over to Minister Alsina for your opening five minutes.

Minister Victòria Alsina

Thank you so much, first of all, che Russell. I think that, yes, we share the Marie Curie and probably much more that we will discover today. I’m really honoured to share this room with Mr Smith and Professor Weller and I wanted to say that it is really an honour to join and to be invited to be part of this conversation in the Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs, one independent platform of thinking that I really have been following over the years, a distinguished organisation that I think is the perfect space to have the debate that we are going to have. I’m coming, myself, from the academia, so I think that this is one of the environments in which I feel more comfortable, and I hope we will have this conversation very, very fruitfully. I think also, as the Catalan Minister of Foreign Action, that this is a relevant topic for us, for the political situation and this new stage of the conflict in which we are these days.

So, I just wanted to share with you five key ideas that I think can help us to, you know, to shape the conversation that comes after and, also, the questions from the audience, right? So, I wanted to really start saying, as part of this bigger debate that we want to have about the movements, different movements that are going on in Europe, right, connected to a self-determination right, that Catalonia has always been, since its inception, has been always looking to be open to the world and to be part of Europe, right? So, I think that even if we will have the opportunity to discuss this much more later on, I think that be relevant to start saying that the European Union is not perfect and, of course, we – it bel – precisely, I think that because Catalonia believes truly in the EU project, at the same time as Europhiles, we are very critical on some of the shortcomings that are going on lately. So, I think that’s an space for an interesting conversation.

And I also wanted to raise, as the framework in – for today, that the social support, the current social support for independence in Catalonia is as strong as ever. Just to share with you a significant figure that shapes this, I want to raise that 52% of those who voted in the last elections that we had in February, in the middle of the COVID crisis, in the middle of a big wave that we had at the moment, voted for parties that are pro-independent. So, we have 52% of the vote and this is not something that changes, indeed, it increases a little bit a majority of people that has been supporting those party over the last years.

So, another idea that I wanted to share with you initially, to shape the conversation, is that, at the same time, it’s obvious that we are facing a kind of, deathlock in the political situation that we have, and it is not because people of Catalonia don’t want to decide their political future. It’s because there is a huge consensus that it has been always, during the last ten years, over 70% that the solution to the political conflict we are living is a binding referendum and this referendum is not happening, right? The opposition of the Spanish Government over the years, including the current Prime Minister, Mr Sánchez, opposing the ideas to negotiate the celebration of a referendum for the independence of Catalonia, brings us to this deathlock, right? So, I think that we can sum up that instead of trying to solve this political conflict with a political solution, like a referendum, that it has a huge consensus back home, they tried to solve the problem during the last years precisely with what they call a judicialization of politics and with the subsequent politization of justice, these two things together bring us close to where we are today.

So, a final idea that I wanted to share with you as an introduction is precisely that now we have ongoing negotiations, the political conflict is still there, but we are in another stage, so we have this table for negotiation. And I should say that this is combined with the persecution and the prosecution of activists and Politicians in a lot of judiciary processes and in a lot of – in different courts in Spain. So, I think that is important to put these together, because these two things condition it a lot, what – which is the political momentum we are leading.

So, just to say that the difference – one relevant – probably one of the most relevant difference between Cat – the Catalan case and the Scottish case and, also, the [inaudible – 11:50] case, right, or Flanders, is that – is the Madrid unwillingness to recognise that Catalonia is a nation and is a political subject that should be able to, you know, to move forward or to have the right of self-determination. And I think that this is the beginning of everything that happened before.

I will finish with a quote of a Catalan Former President, President Pujol, who, a long time ago, in 1985, gave a conference, and in the – in Aachen, the capital of the Carolingian Empire, and he said, “We want to build a country, our country, and we wish to participate modestly in the construction of Europe.” I think that this expresses well that Catalonia want to work for our citizens and the needs of our citizens, but at the same time, we have the ambition to participate in the construction of Europe and I should say, more broadly, on the global challenges that we are facing and that our liberal democracies are facing. So, I’m very much looking forward to have this conversation with all of you and thanks, again, for inviting me.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much, Victòria. Going with the alphabetical order by surname, five minutes from Alyn Smith, the SNP Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs.

Alyn Smith MP

Well, Russell, thanks very much. It’s a pleasure to follow Victòria and make contact again, virtually, rather than in person, sadly. I need no encouragement to get to Catalonia, especially this time of year when Scotland is cold and dark and particularly dire, as we contemplate the next few months. But I’m grateful to Chatham House for setting up this forum and grateful, also, to the participants for being part of it.

But in terms of general overview, I think the first thing for me to stress is, much as I absolutely think it’s legitimate that we should be comparing the independence movements of various places, the big thing you all need to take away is that there’s a lot of differences between the individual independence movements. There is no domino effect, because we’re not dominoes. Different places have their own history, their own geography, their own political context and their own aspirations and it’s important to recognise that a lot of the pro-autonomy movements across the European Continent actually don’t want independence. They want greater linguistic rights or regional self-government, or more autonomy, or more linguistic rights, and that’s all very legitimate and I applaud that, but – and I support that. But only, I would suggest, two places in the whole of the European Union’s context are seriously looking for independence and that is Scotland and that is Catalonia.

Other movements in other places are looking for different things, of course. We’ve got the Faroe Islands, we’ve got Greenland, but they’re already specific cases within the EU firmament and, of course, Northern Ireland has a very, very dynamic constitutional politics, but nobody there is looking for independence. The question is, union with the UK or reunification with the island – the state of Ireland.

And from Scotland’s perspective, it’s really important to understand our history, but independence is not about the history or the flags, or the anthems, or the old battles, or the songs. We’ve got all that now as part of the UK. Scotland was founded as an independent country in 843 A.D. We’re one of Europe’s oldest countries. Our borders haven’t changed for hundreds of years. Because of our geography, most of it’s sea. So, we have a very narrow land border with our closest friend and neighbour, England, but the miracle of Scotland’s pro-independence sentiment isn’t that we exist at all. It’s that – there’s room and it’s the fact that we achieved 45% in the 2014 independence referendum, having been part of Great Britain and the United Kingdom for 315 years. So, the fact that 45% of the voting population of Scotland did accept our policy for independence, really does show the durability of Scotland’s identity and sense of itself and aspirations for the wider world.

Now, in the time that we’ve got, I wouldn’t go into too much of the detail, but the background to where we are. The Scottish Parliament was re-established in 1999. It’s still a new institution in a lot of ways, but it was established based on the German federal model. We have the same voting system as the Deutsche Bundesbank. We are specifically – in our local government and in our national government we have proportional representation. My district, Stirling, is a coalition between the SNP and Labour parties. We’ve been able to work together. Coalition and co-operation is built into the Scottish electoral system. It is not built into the place that I’m currently a member of, in Westminster, but it is built into every aspect of Scottish governance, and that’s a really important distinction.

Within the 2014 referendum we put forward our case for independence. Our case for independence was that we would become an independent state, acceding into the world, not by right, but because we’re a democratic, mainstream internationalist organisation. We were pro-NATO, we remain pro-NATO, because Scotland is too strategic to go dark. Now, the clue is in the question, it’s the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We have huge maritime interests in the North Atlantic, in the North Sea Basin, and we’ve also got huge resources that need to be defended. And we’ll be a smaller country, not a small country, but a smaller country and we recognise that multilateralism is important to our proposition.

We’re also pro-European. Being pro-European, we want to be independent not to be separate or apart, or delusions of exceptionalism, we want to join the world. We want to join the world as ourselves and we want to contribute to the global A Team that is the European Union. Acting as a bloc of 500 million people, we might just have a chance to beat things like climate change, the migration crisis, all the issues that are bigger than any one country, however big or however small. We lack the delusion of exceptionalism that says we can somehow go it alone. We don’t want to go it alone. We want to join the mainstream of the world as ourselves and we believe, from my party’s perspective, that we will represent our interests better and more effectively than we do as being represented by the Westminster Parliament, which in every election since 2014, the people of Scotland have comprehensively rejected. And it’s really important that we have a series of democratic mandates that are factual. It’s not a question of debate. The people of Scotland, at every opportunity since 2014, have demonstrated we want something different than that has been delivered by the UK.

So, in terms of where we are now, we had a refer – we had an election in Scotland in May and the independence question is firmly back on the table, because my party won. We came within one seat of achieving an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament, as I say, a proportional system. But the fact that we did that after 14 years of government is a remarkable political achievement. The pro-independence Greens also had a significantly good result, and we have a stable agreement with them that will deliver a stable government for Scotland and also a referendum for Scotland on the question of independence.

Independence is back on the table, not because we don’t accept referendums. We do, we did accept the 2014 referendum result. We got on with our lives. We’re democrats, we believe in the rule of law, we believe in the democratic sovereignty of the people of Scotland and the people of Scotland in 2014 made a choice and we respected that choice. And a lot of people who voted no, to stick with the UK, did so on the basis of remaining within the European Union, did so on the basis of remaining within the single market, the Customs Union and the political project that is the European Union. And the EU referendum that the UK inflicted upon us in 2016 was only 18 months after those promises that people voted upon on 2014 and those promises have been upended.

In the EU referendum in 2016, Scotland voted massively to remain within the EU. Not unanimously, of course. We’ve got a lively politics, but every single counting region voted to remain. So, having been told 18 months earlier that we should lead – not leave the UK, that we’re “a partnership of equals,” that our “opinion mattered,” that you should “stick with the UK in order to remain European,” we were told we are part of the UK and we should shut up and know our place. That’s demonstrably unfair, that’s demonstrably unsustainable. And the reason why independence is back on the table is that there has been a material change in circumstance and the people of Scotland have just endorsed that prospect in a referendum.

So, the question of when we have the referendum is when, not if, and if the UK has become the sort of place where democratically elected parties cannot implement their manifesto, then the UK is in more trouble than I think it’s in, and I think it’s in quite a bad way. So, we’ve got a lively politics in Scotland, and I look forward to the questions and the comments of this discussion and look forward to hearing our next speaker. Russell, thanks very much.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much, Alyn. Yes, one thing that unites us all in this country, regardless of our nationality or our political affiliation, is that it’s certainly a lively politics going on at the moment.

Alyn Smith MP

Oh, it is.

Dr Russell Foster

We’ll hand over to Professor Weller for your five-minute introduction and then we’ll start the panel discussion.

Professor Marc Weller

Thank you so much. Before my five-minute starts, let me offer a declaration of interest. I was the Chairman of a commission asked by one of the Catalonian parties to offer thoughts on self-determination around the time of the referendum. So, together with American and other international Lawyers, we had a luminous commission that worked on this question at the time. That said, I heard Minister Alsina refer in her speech to self-determination and I will devote my five minutes to the five types of self-determination, in order to identify where our two cases fit in.

International laws made by governments, and governments, kind of, conspire together to keep the territorial unity of their states in place. So, it’s not surprising that, on the one hand, we have the rhetoric of self-determination, what sounds very good, but in practice, the principle has been framed in its aspects as it relates to actual independence against the wishes of a central government. We don’t have a problem whether central government agrees, and you just go. But where we have a divergent of views, the right to self-determination has been phrased – framed very restrictively, in the sense of immediately, it’s supporting independence and giving you an entitlement to go, have a referendum and go, that really applies only to colonies. And although the felt temperature in Scotland, or certainly Catalonia, might be to feel colonised, in a way, over centuries, not having a sufficient voice in government, feeling perhaps economically exploited, all of that is real experience, but does not amount to qualifying under this label of colonial self-determination.

The next one is constitutional self-determination. That’s not based in international law itself, but in the individual constitutions of states and some of them actually contain an entitlement to self-determination in the sense of secession, but they are very few. It was the Former Soviet Union. Now it’s Saint Kitts and Nevis, Lichtenstein, Ethiopia. Catalonia-Spain actually has a clause that says the opposite. The Spanish constitution tries to exclude the possibility of secession. So, there are three kind of possibilities.

One is the constitution expressly says, “Yes, you can secede, you have self-determination,” which doesn’t apply here. The second one is the UK case, implied self-determination. The UK Government accepts that you can go if a referendum is in favour, even if there’s no express constitutional provision for secession in the UK constitutional order. And then, the third one is that the constitution says, “No, you can’t ever secede, whatever happens,” and that, of course, is problematic in the case of Catalonia.

And then the third type is remedial self-determination, that was introduced in the context of Kosovo. Can you secede if you are significantly repressed by the central government or if you are excluded from participation government? Although Catalonia did suffer significant outrages at the time of the referendum, this does not amount to the kind of sustained systemic repression over some years, that would give rise to this entitlement, and one also has to say it’s an entitlement that is fairly controversial and not yet well established.

The next one is effective secession. You don’t actually have a right to secede, but as the International Court of Justice found in relation to Kosovo, you can still secede, not under international law entitlement, but just through the facts you create. And the confusion of many governments is to argue that that would be somehow unlawful. It will be unlawful under their own constitutional order, as Spain argued in relation to Catalonia, but the ICG has held that if a people declares itself independent, it steps out of that very order and at that moment, it can no longer be held to be constrained by the provisions of the very legal order from which they tried to remove themselves. But what Catalonia was unable to do was to take the next step, which is then to show that it really is administering itself independently, despite the pressure from the Spanish Government, and it was, I think, perhaps, not quite prepared to show in practice that it was now purporting to be an independent state acting. It hoped that the EU states and others would recognise it solving the issue, but that, of course, didn’t quite happen and that’s where Catalonia, I think, fell foul of this principle.

And the last one is unlawful secession. There are cases where an – a state looks like a state, quacks like a state, walks like a state, but it ain’t a state. Northern Cyprus, the Turkish Republic, created through the use of force, Srpska, created through ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. But, of course, that wouldn’t be the case here, either in relation to Scotland or in relation to Catalonia. Clearly, Scotland has an entitlement, I would argue, not only to obtain independence if a referendum supports that, and if it has the entitlement to obtain independence, then it also must have the entitlement to hold a referendum.

In the case of Catalonia, it’s slightly more difficult, given the constitutional situation and I think the Minister’s right to point to the negotiation requirement. Even if you hold a referendum in favour – and you win in favour of independence, you have to negotiate about the terms of a separation. This comes out of the Canadian Supreme Court looking at the possibilities relating to Quebec. And that is the right approach, and it is one which the court says you have to – you lose credibility if you fail seriously to engage in these negotiations, and that is a risk for Madrid, and Spain, I think, to fail to seriously engage in genuine negotiations, which are now taking place. Thank you.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much, Marc, and thank you to Victòria and Alyn, as well, for your opening remarks. I can see there’s questions already coming through in the chat bar, so what I forgot to say earlier on, and they briefed me several times and I forgot to say, if you do have a question, please do – to the audience members, if you have questions, please do put them in the little chat box and in the final 15/20 minutes, we’ll open up to an audience Q&A. You can also tweet us, as this goes on, using the #CHEvents.

So, what we’re going to do now is move onto a conversation between the panellists and, of course, Victòria and Alyn will want to respond to some of the points from Marc and Marc, you’ll want to respond to those. I suppose the first thing, to start the conversation going, you talked there, Marc, about the different legal mandates and the legal authorities for calling independence plebiscites in the Scottish and Catalan contexts, and in addition to the question of whether Catalonia and Scotland have the legal authority, I would also like to ask, do they have the popular mandate to do this? Alyn, in a Savanta poll last month, we saw that support and opposition for independence were quite neck-and-neck, in the upper 40s, with about, you know, 10% undecided. And Victòria, you mentioned that back in February, around 52% of Catalans had voted for pro-independence parties and movements. So, an immediate question would be is 52%, or 51%, is this sufficient? How do you stop this becoming a second Brexit? And to go back to what Marc was saying, is there the legal and the popular mandate for these referenda? As Victòria was the first to speak last time, shall we go back to Victòria and then Alyn?

Minister Victòria Alsina

Thank you so much. So, I will start engaging with this classification that Professor Weller shared with us, and just adding a piece of – I mean, my – indeed, my – I think what is a type of consensus, right, that – so, as Professor Weller said, there is not really a legal mechanism in the Spanish constitution that really allow us to go out, right? So, the referendum is something that it needs to be negotiated and it requires, of course, the will of the central government. But I should say that in this particular situation, it’s also necessary to analyse that, as a consequence of what happened, we had people on prison, we have people on exile, and we have a lot of lower ranking officials who are prosecuted. So, of course, we – all the situations are very difficult to compare, and Catalonia is not Kosovo, but is not a place where we can say that human and political rights have been secured during this period. So, I think that this is a totalisation that is relevant to put on the arena, right?

And I should say, to answer your question, Russell, so, you were mentioning this possibility of people splitted in a, kind of, second Brexit, right, if we vote. I mean, let’s vote, let’s see, because I think that what we have, and a figure that is important here is that in different momentums during the last ten years, of course, the percentage of people who supported the referendum as a solution is something that moves between 70 and 80%, depending on the moment, but always in that range. A lot of people, of course, will vote no, because – but they still think that this is the way to close the conflict, right? And – but it’s also true that probably the participation will be very high if this happen one day, and we need to see which will be the final proportion of people that vote yes or no. And I don’t think that the electoral results show a lot of what people is thinking, but referendums are special occasions, so I think that this is something that needs to be covered that way.

And at the same time, I think, also, that the EU treaties do not address the issue of secession without an existing member state to connect this with Europe, but is also the framework of our conversation. But I think that in – when this arises, it will be a political issue that needs a political solution, and it will be solved by negotiations. And I’m certain that, at that stage, the European Union traditional pragmatism to remain the – in the market and to remain altogether with prevail. But that’s, of course, my personal opinion.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much. Alyn.

Alyn Smith MP

Yeah, lots to chew on there, and I mean, I’d – my starting point with all of this is that if you’re a democrat, the people have the right to choose their government and have a right to choose what state their part of and I think any other answer leads you to a strange place. That is, however, a process that needs to be managed, which is why we have laws, which is why we have domestic laws and international laws. You look across the broad sweep of the European Continent over the last 40/50 years, the only constant has been constitutional change, be that re-in – the regaining of the independence of Central and Eastern European countries, as the Soviet Union fell, recovery from fascism and totalitarianism from other countries. We’ve seen a lot of change that’s happened. I mean, don’t, and as some people used to do in Scotland, go to Slovenia and say that constitutional change can happen. Every single Politician there had an active part in facing down Yugoslav tanks as that process went forward, where our proposition in Scotland and Catalonia is that this will be a peaceful, democratic process. So, if you don’t have the people with you, you’re not at the races, that’s the brass tacks of it.

But we do have the people with us and this is the point about the mandate. We have not just one mandate, we’ve got several mandates, in every election to every parliament since 2014 my party has won handsomely. But in 2019, especially, I went – I was privileged – and 2019 was a rollercoaster year. I was privileged to lead the SNP, my candidates to the European elections, where we had the best result we ever had. We won three seats out of six, again on a proportional system. And then in December, I stood for Stirling, which I won with 51% of the vote, where my party was, again, massively endorsed by the people of Scotland on a specifically anti-Brexit, pro-independence platform.

So, we need to have the people of Scotland with us. International law is really clear. The threshold for victory it’s 50% plus one, and I think any other numbers being put in there are just spoilers. But we are very, very clear in my party that any idea of wildcat referendums or extraconstitutional plebiscites just won’t take us there. We have already set the gold standard for what we’re looking for and that was done in 2014, where the Scottish and the UK Governments negotiated the Edinburgh Agreement, which laid the groundwork and the rules for the referendum and committed both parties to observe the outcome. Now, from our side that was pretty straightforward because we lost, but we lost for specific reasons and the change of circumstances since, that’s what we’re looking to do again. And we are going to ratchet the pressure on the UK Government to bring forward that referendum, but we are very, very clear, we want this to be an agreed constitutional, legally binding process.

And beyond the froth and the blather, it’s quite clear that the UK Government in Scotland is preparing the ground for a referendum and the smarter Tories I’m speaking to here are quite clear that it’s when, not if. And I have to say, speaking entirely frankly, we don’t know who’s going to win if it happens. The people of Scotland, as you rightly say, Russell, opinion is fairly balanced. The demographics, I have to say are with my proposition. Younger people tend to be much more pro-independence than older. But what – we will do the same as we did in 2014, which is put forward a detailed prospectus for what it is we’re looking to achieve. We’ve done our homework, we’re serious and what we’re going to be proposing is leaving the UK union, but acceding into, as an independent state, the European Union and NATO. These are not hypothetical things. These are things that exist.

And I’m conscious I’m speaking to a slightly academic audience. The universities and higher education and colleges in Scotland play a really key role in our discourse and the academic community getting back into the EU reference networks, the structural funds, freedom of movement, the Erasmus Programme, these are all big ticket wins for our education sector and we could join Ireland in being an English speaking, well educated, well thought of member of the European Union, which would be an entirely attractive prospect for an awful lot of people who were ‘no’ last time round. But we are absolutely clear there will be no non-binding referendum from Scotland. My party will just not bring that forward. That would be a failure on the part of negotiation. It would also be a failure of politics, but it would also be grossly disrespectful for the UK Government to continue to deny that we have a mandate when everybody in Scotland acknowledges that we do.

Dr Russell Foster

If I could pull up on a couple of points that Alyn and Victòria have made and Marc, you’ll know better than I with your constitutional expertise. Alyn has mentioned there that this is not independence to go it alone and go in the dark, but independence in order to join the European Union. And we saw exactly the same coming out of Catalonia since 2017, of independence in order to join the EU and join NATO. But this is a two-way negotiation. How would the EU be able to handle these applications? Would the EU necessarily accept membership by Scotland and Catalonia?

And a question that I jotted down earlier on, in specific relation to NATO, as well, just a couple of weeks ago we got the outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, stating that “the UK needs to be prepared for a conflict with the Russian Federation.” Now, given that the EU may not automatically accept applications from an independent Scotland or Catalonia, and given the international situation that we’re facing at the moment, is now the right time for independence movements? I wonder if, Marc, if you would be able to give us the first response and then we can go back to Alyn and Victòria? And those of you in the audience, if you upvote the questions, which are appearing in the Q&A, then we’ll be able to ask those first when we come to the open discussion.

Professor Marc Weller

The issue of EU membership is fairly clear. You need a unanimous decision by all of the existing member states in order to become a member, that has severely limited the chances, say, of Kosovo to become a new member state, given that not everyone in the EU has recognised Kosovo as a state as yet and perhaps for the foreseeable future.

I was surprised that Scotland didn’t spend some time very early on, after the referendum, when the UK Government, at least nominally, invited it to join the pre-Brexit process, to try and negotiate some sort of right of return in case of referendum success in years to come, but perhaps that would not have been realistic. And therefore, both Catalonia and Scotland would be fresh applicants, but they are kind of applicants with a much quicker role. They would not be at the back of the queue, as some might suspect, but they would be at the head of the queue for the reasons that they already meet all of the EU criteria of whatever it is, food safety and all sorts of other things, which other applicants have to go through and work hard to achieve over time.

So, meeting the EU standards would be fairly easy, but to overcome the resistance of the handful, about four or five states that fears secession themselves, Belgium, Spain and others, they would really have to emerge as states from a consensual process, where London, in a sense, presents Scotland as a candidate and says, “Yes, and we agree that this was a fair and well negotiated process.” If Spain were to continue to oppose Catalonian independence, it emerges as an effective entity without the support of Madrid, obviously, it could not become a member of the EU, given the unanimity requirement.

So, all of these supports what we’ve heard both from Alyn and from the Minister, there has to be a credible referendum. There has to be a consensual process, and I think the key argument for Catalonia is, as Alyn said it a moment ago, in a democratic society, whether or not formally you can claim a right of self-determination under the constitution, under international law, you cannot disregard the will of such a well-defined, historically established, constituency as the people of Catalonia. An easier case for Alyn, the UK Government has accepted that if there’s a referendum and it’s in favour of independence, Scotland will go. They won’t send UK Marines to keep it in, obviously. So, the question is just will there be a referendum? And I agree with Alyn that mid-term, the government cannot refuse it. It has to be granted.

Dr Russell Foster

Victòria and Alyn, would you like to respond?

Minister Victòria Alsina

Yeah, I think those questions are key, right? And I wanted to add a couple of ideas connected to what Professor Weller was just saying. So, I think that in the case of Catalonia, who is part of an existing member state, a fresh application, as we were discussing, is not the path forward, right? Because I think that the membership for any people that wishes to stay within the Union and should, I mean, should never be questioned by any member state, because you are already part of the Union before. And countries that become independent in a legal and democratic manner should be able to accede to the EU automatically, or be a simplified and accelerated procedure, if this is the case.

But the idea that I wanted to add, besides this, is that I think that now there is an ongoing work that a caucus created in the European Parliament is taken care of. So, Catalan MPs in the European Parliament, together with a few more MPs, promoted this creation of this caucus to discuss how the self-determination right should be put in practice, in terms of which should be the conditions. So, this caucus will help to create a conversation in the framework of the EU institutions about how you should put this right in practice. So, just to raise, for the audience, that I think that this is an interesting process, an interesting conversation, to follow, because there are a lot of room for discussion about how to put this in practice. So, I think it’s interesting to keep that piece of information in mind.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much. Alyn.

Alyn Smith MP

Yeah, I strongly agree with Marc’s point, and from our side, colonies have been mentioned. Scotland’s not a colony; Scotland was never a colony. We don’t feel like a colony; we don’t feel colonised. The founding constitutional document of Great Britain was the Treaty of Union with Scotland, 1707. By the democratic standards of the time, our nobles in the Parliament voted, democratically-ish, to dissolve the Scottish Parliament and dissolve the English Parliament, as well, and form a new Parliament called Great Britain’s Parliament. It just happened to be in London, and Scotland’s been part of the – Great Britain and the UK for 314 years. We were an independent state for 864 years and we’ve got a very strong sense of ourselves, and this would be us going back to the Treaty of the Union 1707 and dissolving the political construct that was Great Britain, and Scotland was an enthusiastic part of the British Empire. We were enthusiastic slavers and tobacco traders and gunrunners. It wasn’t all good stuff. Yeah, we weren’t the good guys, but we’re not a colony, we’ve never been colonised. So, that’s not us, that doesn’t apply.

But what we do have, in terms of the European Union, there’s no rights to membership, and in 2014, my former leader did box us into a bit of a corner by using words like ‘automatic’, when none of this stuff is automatic. You know, there’s an application process that the European Union has. We will not be the first state to accede into the European Union. So, there’s lots of people who know how this stuff works, not least in Scotland. But the big thing that has changed is that we will now be acceding, because of Brexit, from outwith the European Union, not from within it. And that’s a really fundamentally different point within Brussels, in that – a bit of backstory.

My predecessor in Brussels, Professor Neil McCormick, was an MEP for Scotland for a term and he was part of the Giscard d’Estaing Convention, which drafted the constitution, which became the Lisbon Treaty, and he specifically put forward amendments – he put forward new articles to it, to create a right to self-determination, to actually let – put a treaty framework into if part of a member state wanted to become a member state. And it was shot down by absolutely every single member state, because the EU is a club of states, and the states are not going to do anything to encourage secession of member states. That’s the reality there.

So, the treaties are silent on internal enlargement, but there is a squeamishness amongst the institutions and amongst the member states to do anything that would encourage that sort of dynamic. Now, that’s something that I regret. I think if the EU was a bit more pragmatic on that sort of stuff, maybe the EU wouldn’t look so clunky and tired and formulaic and maybe Brexit might not have happened because people would’ve been a bit more enthusiastic about the institutions. But that’s where it is and we recognise that, and one of the major blocks that we had, psychologically, in Brussels in 2014, has been removed by Brexit, because we will be applying from outside and the Copenhagen criteria exists. We’ve been part of the Economique et Monétaire for longer than a number of EU member states have. So, we’ll be acceding from outwith, but not far away and a lot of the legislative stuff is already exactly where it needs to be. But on internal enlargement, we get it, there is a chilliness with that sort of stuff. But – so from our perspective, we’ve done our homework.

I was struck, also, by Marc’s comment about a right to return. We did try, but there – but safe to say that wasn’t a realistic prospect. But what we did see from the council was the decision in 2017 about in the event Northern Ireland votes to reunify, it’s already decided by the European Union member states that it will be treated in the same way as East Germany just merging into Germany and becoming part of the EU’s territory, without a new vote of the council. So, the member states have already accepted the idea that in the event of Irish reunification, Northern Ireland just becomes part of the EU. So, that’s a hugely significant point from Northern Ireland, but in Scotland’s case, that would’ve been a council decision too far at that point. But…

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much.

Alyn Smith MP

…rest assured, we’ve…

Dr Russell Foster

I’m afraid I’ll have to…

Alyn Smith MP

Well, rest assured we’ll come back to that soon enough.

Dr Russell Foster

We absolutely will, and maybe one point that the English and the Scottish could agree on and that is how different things would’ve been if they’d put the capital in York to begin with, as it ought to have been. What we’ll do is, in the final few minutes, let’s take some audience questions. Now, I see that the top voted one is from Nicholas Webb, who asks that “In both Scotland and Wales,” and as we’ve seen in Catalonia, as well, “parties which are moving for greater home rule, independence, our centre-left, with [audio cuts out – 48:49] and in Spain re-emphasising the Union. How are you going to win over a broad church of voters in Catalonia and Scotland?” And if we could keep our answers quite short, please. Victòria, if we could go with yourself first [pause]. Sorry, so how would Catalan independence move – how would the Catalan independence movement and how would the Scottish National Party seek to win over quite a diverse spectrum of demographics and political opinions?

Minister Victòria Alsina

I think that this is the case, I mean, in Catalonia the profile of the people that is in favour of independence is quite diverse. So, I think we cannot connect this profile to a concrete, you know, centre-right or centre-left, so it’s transversal. And I think that this is pretty clear over the years, right, because this has been working like this over the years. So, I will say that to be short and to have more time for questions.

Alyn Smith MP

And from a Scottish perspective, likewise. I’m – and I know people who are economically really quite right-wing that view an independent Scotland as a way to re-engineer our economy and it’s getting back into the European Union, and the structural funds, the single market, the Customs Union. It could be a very positive right-wing economic project, which a number of folks have.

There’s three axes intersecting in Scotland’s politics right now. There’s the traditional left/right and then there’s yes/no to independence and then there’s leave/remain to the European Union, and not everyone who’s in favour of independence is in favour of EU membership. They’re out there, and not everyone who’s in favour of independence is left-wing. But my party is a social democratic party, we’re in the European mainstream. In the European Parliament we sit with the Greens. We’re ideologically pretty much right in the mainstream and I think that’s where Scotland is, and I think that’s where we chime with the people of Scotland, in terms of day-to-day politics. And then, the constitutional question, that’s a really broad church and I believe that independence will be the true genesis of Scottish politics, where finally, we can stop talking about the constitutional stuff and get on with actual left-right politics.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you both so much. Marc, would you like to chip in, or – you’re muted.

Professor Marc Weller

As the Americans tend to say, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That, I think, has been a difficult factor in the 2014 referendum in Scotland and one has to give credit to the Scottish authorities. They’ve worked fairly hard doing their homework to try and have a well worked out case how the Scottish economy would function as a, sort of, Nordic type system and as part of the UK. I had a long attempt in The Scotsman earlier in the year to try and argue that Scotland could achieve literally everything it wants from independent by negotiating a loose federal type of arrangement with the UK and perhaps the same might apply to the Catalans. But I can see that there’s no market in either place for this sensible intermediate idea, given that those in favour of their nation want to have a state to express it and the unionists don’t want to touch anything. To them, the F word, federalism, is the first step towards separation and therefore, they don’t want it.

But if one could take a step back, then actually, a solution of that kind would give to both people what they are looking for in real terms. All the powers they want could be delivered under that guise, but it is, of course, and I think it’s legitimate, this emotional sense that we do need to have our separate state, and that would be interesting to hear from our two panellists whether that could fly.

Dr Russell Foster

It’s something we can consider and in fact, we’ll take another question alongside that, as well. Americk asks a question that I was thinking about on my way here. Alyn had mentioned earlier on how we have a 2014 Scottish independence vote and then, Brexit changed the conversation. Americk asks, “How has coronavirus changed the conversation around Catalan and Scottish independence?” To what – we’ve seen this rally around the flag effect and certainly, in this country, we’ve seen the four different member states, for want of a better phrase, going their own way. To what extent has COVID exposed strengthening or weakening affiliation with independence movements, Victòria?

Minister Victòria Alsina

I want to say at this point that COVID also shows us the advantages of being able to take your own decisions. Indeed, at the time, Catalonia was the first region isolating, a minor region, and to focus, to concentrate the disease, while, for example, Spain has totally denied closing Madrid. That was the main focus. But I want to say, at the end of the day, if you can take your own decisions after you can better co-operate, right? Because what is clear at this point is that for these kind of challenges, right, big states, like Spain, even if they are big, they come to a small for global problems, so we all – you – well, you need to co-operate with all actors on the Earth in this case, and decision-making closer, also, to where you better know the problems can be more efficient.

And just to answer to the question that Professor Weller was raising about federalism. So, I think that federalism has no market in Spain, because to be – to make that work, you need to have people that really accept federalism, right? It takes two to tango and I don’t think that this is the case of the situation we have living in Spain.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you. Alyn.

Alyn Smith MP

To deal with the federalism point first, in – my party’s open to that, and I remember my party having debates in the run-up to 1997, when the proposal to re-establish the Scottish Parliament was on the table, and a very much, a devolved Parliament, rather than a federal Parliament. And there was a debate within my party as to whether we should participate that – in that at all, because it wasn’t independent. So, exactly the sentiment that Marc outlines, and the pragmatists won. We did participate enthusiastically in the Scottish Parliament and any more powers for the Holyrood Parliament, we are – we’re welcome. We’re game for that. And it’s one of the failures, I would contend, of the others parties in Scotland that that middle space doesn’t exist, and we’ve got to share – accept our share of that, as well, in that our proposition is independence, much as we’d accept steppingstones towards it. But it has boiled down to a binary choice of independence within the European Union or remaining within the UK, because of a complete failure of the other parties to put forward anything that was actually satisfactory to the people of Scotland. So, we’ve had that challenge, we’ve set that challenge and we are well – we’re 30 years beyond the devolution versus independence argument. We’re a party that wants as many powers for Scotland and we want to make them work.

But on the powers point, what COVID’s done is really bring a lot of people who were not necessarily paying attention to day-to-day politics into sharp relief about who makes decisions affecting their lives and what values they’re operating to and what values they’re actually working towards. And the reality is that in the last election, in Wales, in England and in Scotland, any governing party that was responsible for the vaccine rollout did well. So, that worked for the Conservatives in England, it worked for Labour in Wales, it worked for the SNP in Scotland. So, there is an extent to which competence has been accrued to whoever was in charge and remarkably, there’s a sense that the UK has done well with this stuff, when actually, in European terms and global terms, I think there’s plenty other better ways we could’ve done it.

But what it has done is bring a visibility, also, to Nicola Sturgeon, in that Nicola Sturgeon was a former Health Minister. When we had a swine flu outbreak in Scotland ten/12 years ago, she was the Health Secretary. So, she spotted the significance of COVID right from the get-go and she did daily briefings, which were watched religiously by particularly the pensioner audience. My parents, in their early 70s, were tuning into the daily updates on a religious basis and they really did – and that demographic has seen Nicola personally as a – she is deeply serious, she’s diligent, she’s competent. Where the UK messaging has been rather different. There’s been different Ministers on different days. There’s been different counter-prod – counter-messages going out that we should all get back into our offices, then we shouldn’t, then a lockdown happened. Where the messaging in Scotland I think’s been rather more consistent.

But COVID, I believe, has put rocket boosters on the case for independence, because the people of Scotland have seen that we’ve got a functioning, effective, diligent First Minister and indeed, Scottish Government. But then the economic recovery from COVID, and this is my point about getting back into the EU, the single market, the Customs Union, and the structural funds and Erasmus and freedom of movement, one of the biggest economic challenges for Scotland right now is lack of labour, because since EU freedom of movement ended, we’ve seen an awful lot of businesses just can’t get the staff that we need and don’t have the skills that we need. So, getting back into the EU will put rocket boosters under our recovery from COVID. So, I think COVID has massively changed the context to some of this stuff and given a much greater impetus to it for people who weren’t necessarily that bothered by the constitutional question previously.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much, and I’m so sorry to the audience that we couldn’t get through all of the questions in the allotted time that we have. We’ve got about one minute to go, so, a final thought from our panellists, and we’ll go Marc, Alyn and to end, Minister Alsina.

Professor Marc Weller

My message is simple, it’s good to talk. Explore alternatives, do not admit that the other side can foreclose them simply by saying no. Doing that will undermine their own legitimacy and enhance the case for unilateral action. So, I think the course we’ve heard outlined by the two speakers sounds exactly to be the right one.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much. Alyn Smith.

Alyn Smith MP

Well, to close, yes, I think it’s good to talk. It’s as good a takeaway for any of us. There are solutions that can be found and one of the reasons that Brexit has personally so upset me, and as a committed pro-European, it breaks my heart that future generations of students won’t have the opportunities that I had, unless we find other solutions to this stuff. And solutions can be found, but that needs to be done on the basis of rationality and fact and fact rich conversations, like this one. So, I’d really welcome Chatham House and the other participants, and the audience, as well, for being part of it, and look forward to the next discussion.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you, and to see us out, Victòria Alsina.

Minister Victòria Alsina

Thank you so much to all of you. So, just two ideas that are quick to explain. So, I think that, returning to the European dimension of the conversation we are having altogether today, I think that, from a EU point of view, what – it cannot be around the standard about how they treat the future of the self-determination, right, in the case of Scotland, in the case of Catalonia. So, I think that this is connected from the EU perspective, right, the response that the Union, the solutions that the Union need to give us. So, I think that’s one point.

And the other thing is that when we are talking about the political momentum that we have, living in Catalonia. So, one dimension is the will of the people to this self-determination right through a binding referendum. But unluckily, we are also facing a vulneration of human and civil rights. So, I think that this second stage, it also needs to – it’s necessary to put this second stage of the conflict in the balance when we are trying to find solutions and open conversations. Thank you so much to all of you for being part of this conversation and really, I really enjoy it.

Dr Russell Foster

Thank you so much. Thank you to all of our panellists for a fascinating discussion. It’s fantastic to be reminded that we can come from very different places, very different political backgrounds, and we can have a civilised conversation and look for solutions that are there. And thank you to our very patient audience for your time this evening, and last, but not least, thank you to Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, for hosting tonight’s session, and we look forward to you joining us for a future panel. Thank you, everyone, and have a wonderful evening.