The politics of unilateral secession in the European Union: the case of Catalonia

ABSTRACT

We analyse the politics of unilateral secession in the European Union (EU), focusing on the Catalan secessionist conflict. Building on a triangulation strategy, within which primary data are cross-checked through semi-structured expert interviews, we examine how the involved central state and secessionist sub-state actor fought for the support of the supranational party within the EU’s multilevel framework. We make two entrenched contributions. We find that the Spanish government succeeded in securing the status quo, not only because of its relations within the bigger European party groups and the benevolent support of EU member states, but also because of the secessionist-restraining nature of the EU. The EU switched from the position of non-intervention towards one of open support for the central state government, and as a result it has developed an informal framework which could deter future unilateral secession intentions.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union (EU)
• secession
• internal
• unilateral
• Catalonia
• Spain
• diplomacy
• unilateral
• independence

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For critical comments and suggestions, we are grateful to Karlo Basta, Josep Costa, Matthias vom Hau, Fernando Hortal, Emily Jones, Jordi Mas, Axel Marx, Klaus-Jürgen Nagel, Ferran Requejo, Juan Rodríguez Teruel, Marc Sanjaume and Martijn Vlaskamp. We would also like to thank the participants of the panel ‘Decentralisation and Ethnic Conflict’ at the ECPR General Conference in Wrocław in September 2019, and the participants of the seminar ‘Liquid Borders Within the EU: In Search of Member States’ Territorial Identity and Self-Perception’ at the Institute of Self-Government Studies (Institut d’Estudis de l’Autogovern) in Barcelona in December 2019, where we presented earlier drafts of this article.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In general, the literature on the interdependencies between the supranational, national and sub-state levels of EU governance has argued that European integration lowers the stakes of regionalization (Hooghe et al., 2010; Alesina & Spolaore, 2003). Others have claimed that supranational integration and state fragmentation can in fact be complementary processes (Jordana et al., 2019).

2 Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States of 1933 defined three characteristics of a state: a defined territory; permanent population; and government.

3 The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled at the beginning of the EU integration process that, in contrast to standard international treaties, the EU Treaties could create their own legal international order (ECJ, 5 February 1963). This observation was recently reconfirmed (ECJ, 8 March 2011).

4 Our analysis reveals that, for example, the first Barroso Commission (2004–09) sometimes pointed to international law as the relevant framework (EC, 6 June 2007). But in general, the EU institutions related to EU law and treaties.

5 The document, with all coded written questions, can be supplied by the authors upon request.

6 Also in one of the written answers after the referendum, the EC referred to Article 72 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) stating ‘that member states – Spain in the case at hand – are responsible for maintaining law and order and safeguard internal security’ (EC, 17 January 2018).

7 Carles Puigdemont confirmed in our interview with him that there was no direct contact between him and Tusk to ease a mediation between the Spanish and Catalan governments.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the scholarship 2017_IEA5_00012 from the Institute of Self-Government Studies (Institut d’Estudis de l’Autogovern) in the framework of the resolution PRE/1224/2017, from 24 May 2017, of the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Generalitat de Catalunya (DOGC No. 7382 01.06.2017).