The battle for the future of Scotland is again full. The victory of the separatist parties in Thursday’s elections is possible once again with Great Britain.
The Scottish National Party and the Greens campaigned for the independence of Scotland and the European Union. The British government, which has to approve a new referendum, has already rejected it.
But should Scottish independence be achieved somehow, what are the chances of EU membership?
Had there been a referendum in the next five years, Scotland would still have been closer to EU laws, after all, Britain has been a member of the European Union for nearly half a century, says analyst Christie Hughes of the Scottish Center on EU Relations. There may be a clear path to membership.
But how much Scotland still has to do with EU laws depends entirely on Britain’s Brexit policy in the coming years.
On the European side, any agreement between Scotland and Brussels must be ratified by all EU member states. This is suspect at the moment because some countries, such as Spain, do not want to give to separatist aspirations anywhere in Europe.
Hughes said that unless the independence process was constitutional, Spain would not stand in the way of a Scottish membership application. And this means that both Scotland and Great Britain will have to agree to independence.
Public finances may be the problem. An independent Scotland can start its future with a much larger deficit than EU rules. At the moment, Brussels is holding back from making a statement. Ultimately, the debate about Scotland, a member of the European Union, is still pure speculation.
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