No legal basis for Scottish bid for EU membership: Ex-MP

Press TV has conducted an interview with Derek Conway, a former British legislator from London, about Scotland’s intention to remain in the European Union.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Is it possible for Scotland to go turn around and talk to the EU directly to remain and forget about the UK at this point who has voted not to remain in the European Union?

Conway: There are two things that are happening in Scotland who said that the Scottish government who said that it will try and veto a British Act of Parliament to deconstruct all the treaties that caused Britain to be part of the European Union. It actually is not legally able to do that.

There is a marker in British law that says matters that affect evolved powers in Scotland and in Wales and in Northern Ireland but there has to be a consultation with the parliaments or assemblies of those three constituent parts of the United Kingdom, but only it matters which the Westminster parliament has already given them power over.

They don’t have power of a foreign affairs and they don’t have power over a super national constitutional matters. So, in fact there is no legal basis for what the Scottish first minister is presently saying. It’s really a PR exercise, a media stunt and it will be shown to be that in the fullness of time.

The more important question is “can the Scottish government negotiate directly with the European Union about maybe leaving the United Kingdom and joining the EU into everything, joining the Schengen Agreement, joining the eurozone, financial pact and all of that.

And the truth is they’ve been given a cold shoulder already the president of the European Commission has made it quite clear to them that they would not be prepared to talk to Scotland about these matters.

And the reason they’re saying that of course is that other EU member states would be terrified of this happening. The Northern Alliance in Italy would quite like to break away from Italy. The Catalonians in Spain would quite like to break away from Spain and France is not without its own difficulties break way territory.

So, this is not a Pandora’s box as we say that the EU is going to open up so once they might love to have Scotland a small nation five million people not economically actually very strong once that might just be another card to have in the pack of the European Union. They wouldn’t be prepared to pay the price that they have to pay amongst those other nations. So, again this is all really just about a media exercise on the part of the first minister of Scotland.

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