Brussels, 29/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - Scotland hopes to retain its privileged relationship with the European Union in spite of the result of the British referendum: this is the message sent out in Brussels on Wednesday 29 June by the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to several European figures.
This visit took place on the sidelines of the informal meeting of the Twenty-Seven heads of state or government of the EU (see other article) the day after the European Council during which the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, reaffirmed the intention of the British to leave the Union (see EUROPE 11582). She met the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, the President of the EPP group, Manfred Weber, and the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. “Scotland has earned the right to be heard by Brussels”, the Commission President tweeted a few hours before the meeting. The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, turned down the information, stating that such a meeting would be “inappropriate” in light of the context of the 'Brexit'.
Sturgeon's aim was to lay out the position of the Scottish, most of whom (62%) voted for the UK to stay in the EU, and to obtain assurances that Scotland would be involved in the next steps of the divorce process. The day after the British referendum, she expressed her determination to defend her region's place in the EU, despite the result. “I intend to take all possible initiatives and explore all the options to respect the way the Scottish people voted - in other words, to secure our continued place in the EU and in the single market in particular”, she said. According to one diplomatic source, she received sympathetic responses during her trip to Brussels. The President of the EPP group thanked her on Twitter.
The heads of state or government, on the other hand, did not give a lot away about this issue, following their extraordinary meeting on Wednesday. The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, who is fearful of consequences for Catalonia, said that he was opposed to negotiations between the EU and the region of Scotland: “If the United Kingdom goes, Scotland goes too (…). Our only interlocutor is the United Kingdom”, he stressed. The Polish Prime Minister, Beata Szydlo, also spoke on this subject, taking a similar line. “Everybody needs to be calm and reasonable” to avoid making the situation worse, she said. The Scottish question is an internal issue of a member state and must be managed by the United Kingdom, she went on, before addressing a warning to the European leaders: “politicians, including those in Brussels, must not use this issue for their own ends”. In this context, a diplomatic source pointed out on Tuesday that there was nothing to prevent an “independent state” located in the geographical neighbourhood from applying to join the European Union. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean with Mathieu Bion and Jan Kordys)