Independence in Europe? EU Integration and ‘Stateless Nations’
| Author | Paolo Dardanelli |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905817744634 |
DECEMBER 2017 • POLITICAL INSIGHT 33
Catalonia, October 2017: two million
people voted to secede from Spain
and create el proper Estat d’Europa,
a new European state. Scotland,
September 2014: 1.6 million voted to restore
Scottish sovereignty, last seen in 1707… What is
going on? Was European integration not meant
to erase borders and make independence
irrelevant? In fact, integration has indirectly
sown the seeds for the rising demand for
independence in several European countries.
To understand this apparent paradox, we
need to appreciate how European integration
inuences the politics of devolution and
independence in its member states.
The Europe-states-regions nexus
The connections between the European
Union, its member states and their regions
are numerous and complex. The Union is a
creation of its member states and is collectively
governed by them. At the same time, some
Independence in
Europe? EU Integration
and ‘Stateless Nations’
From Catalonia to Scotland, some of the most pro-European Union
political parties are in favour of national independence. Paolo
Dardanelli explores this apparent paradox and finds that EU integration
has actually fuelled fragmentation in several European states.
have seen European integration as a process
ultimately destined to supersede the traditional
European state system and create some form
of federation in which regions might take their
place alongside, or instead of, the present states.
A common way of looking at the connections
between the three levels is to see them as
part of a system of ‘multilevel governance’.
Popularised by Gary Marks and Liesbet
Hooghe in the 1990s, the notion of multilevel
governance describes the emergence of a
European system where the states are no
longer the dominant players, power is dispersed
among a wide range of governmental and
non-governmental actors, and the boundary
between the domestic and the international
arenas has all but vanished. Multilevel
© Press Association
Political Insight December 2017.indd 33 03/11/2017 10:54
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