Catalonia Can Stay in the EU after Independence

After the pro-independence demonstration in Barcelona last September 11, as well as Spain's refusal to negotiate a new finance model, Catalan President Artur Mas called for an early election in order to choose which way the people of Catalonia want to go.

Since that moment, Spain has changed. It has switched from ignoring the "Catalan problem” to making use of a propaganda Shock and Awe strategy of threats and fear: of military occupation, of the possibility of Catalonia having to leave the EU and being unable to re-enter due to Spain's veto, of a boycott of Catalan products, of refusing to let people decide in referendum, of deporting Catalan citizens whose parents were born in other regions of Spain...

Each and every threat has fallen apart. Among the latest is the possibility of having to leave the European Union. On September 30 an interview with Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, was published in the Diario de Sevilla newspaper.

Viviane Reding

Viviane Reding made it clear: there’s no legal framework saying an independent Catalonia should be excluded from the EU. Reding declared she thought that ‘not for one second that Catalonia will want to leave the EU’. I have known the Catalans for a long time and I have been one of the non-Catalans to be awarded with the “Creu de Sant Jordi” and I know they are real Europeans’.

The Commissioner firmly denied, in reply to the newspaper correspondent's suggestions, that the Vienna Convention states a region has to leave any international organisation upon becoming independent: "Come on, international law does not say anything like that. Please resolve your problems of internal politics in Spain. I trust in the Catalans' European mindset” sentenced Reding.

These statements were in line with Jose Manuel Barroso, who on August 30 said that the secession of a state within the EU should be resolved within the legal domain.

However, Spain still sticks to its discourse of fear.