06 October 2017

Tony Barber: The Catalan crisis poses a threat to the European order

Just as the eurozone’s sovereign debt and bank crises came close to unravelling decades of European construction, so the Catalan nationalists’ push for independence risks opening a Pandora’s box of problems.

[...] At a minimum, other European separatist and autonomist movements may take heart from the insurrectionary mood in parts of Catalonia. They may also draw lessons about how to lure a central government into ill-advised police measures that look bad in the eyes of world public opinion.

In extremis, EU governments and mainstream political parties fear that, should Catalan independence ever happen, controversies about national borders, self-determination and minority rights that were once the cause of many a European war will come to haunt the continent again. In recent years, support for outright secession has waned in Belgium’s Flanders and Spain’s Basque Country. But nationalism on the French island of Corsica has scored notable election victories since 2015. In northern Italy, ethnic German regionalist feelings run high in Alto Adige, a province which formed part of the Habsburg empire until 100 years ago and which is known to its German-speaking majority as South Tyrol.

The implications for the UK and Ireland are serious. Brexit is plunging Britain’s constitutional arrangements into uncertainty. Catalan secession would set a morale-boosting example for pro-independence forces in Scotland, who lost a 2014 referendum, and provide fresh arguments for Irish nationalists who support Northern Ireland’s absorption into an all-Irish state.

Like Brexit, Europe’s refugee and migrant crisis and the turn to illiberalism in Hungary and Poland, Catalonia may test the EU’s unity, strength and values just when it hopes to capitalise on the self-confidence restored with the election victories of Emmanuel Macron in France and Angela Merkel in Germany. By adding militant separatism to rightwing populism and terrorism on the list of challenges that confront Europe’s democracies, Catalonia may keep alive persistent doubts in Washington, Beijing and Moscow about the EU’s capacity to cope with all its difficulties and press ahead with closer union.

In principle, there is a way out of the impasse: more self-rule for Catalonia, notably in financial matters, combined with an overhaul of Spain’s unwieldy system of 17 autonomous regional governments. Like the UK, Spain is not a true federal state but a country where ad-hoc initiatives have bestowed varying degrees of autonomy on different areas. Greater clarity and fairness in the system would help.

Yet a proposal for more Catalan autonomy would fall short of the aspirations of large numbers of separatists, now heightened to fever pitch, especially on the radical left. Moreover, in the light of this week’s turmoil, it is debatable if Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, and Mr Puigdemont are the right men to cut a deal. One way or another, the dialogue of the deaf must end, or the consequences for Spain and Europe risk being severe. [...]

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

Related articles: 

Wolfgang Munchau in Financial Times: A Catalan breakaway would make Brexit look like a cake walk

Bruegel: Catalonia and the Spanish banking system

Verfassungsblog: Catalan secessionism faces the European Union

Yanis Varoufakis: Spain’s Crisis is Europe’s Opportunity

POLITICO: Catalan independence declaration would not be recognized: French minister

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