The "Peace of Westphalia," which was concluded in 1648, ended the 30 years' war fought between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Europe, and the 80 years' war between Spain and the Dutch Republic. This historic event was said to have created a basis for the concept of national self determination.
On January 8,1918, 270 years later, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presented his "Fourteen Points" speech, a statement of principles for peace to be used for negotiations to end World War I. His proclamation reiterated that "the right of people to self determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law," a fundamental concept that was later also prominently included in Article I of the U.N. Charter. However, the European Union, a supra-national organization, founded in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in 1993, has remained very quiet on the subject. It essentially pledges to defend the sovereignty of its member states as they are, and jealously guards against the Union's cohesion.
Although th E.U. has seen significant growth since its inception, it has recently appeared to be moving from one emergency to the next. The planned British exit (Brexit), the migration an refugee crisis, fiscal problems in several of the predominantly Southern European countries, and the festering populist opposition to relinquishing sovereignty to Brussels, count among the most important. Enter Catalonia's regional parliament voting to declare the region an independent republic, a revolutionary act, which prompted Spain's national government to assert control over the area, dissolve the Catalan parliament, sack its leaders (one of which, Carles Puigdemont, promptly left for Belgium, which offered him asylum), and to encourage 300,000-plus Catalans to join a demonstration for national unity, and we might easily conclude that this development could well lead to a further fragmentation within the European Union.
While Catalonia's drive for independence has recently captured most of the headlines, we ought to remember that Brexit dominated the discussion in 2016, as did the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. Brexit negotiations are still progressing, be it very slowly, but Scotland will likely initiate another attempt at acquiring independence in 2019, once Brexit is concluded. (Scotland voted 62 percent to 38 percent to remain in the E.U.). Moreover, the consequences for Ireland, and the complex predicament of Gibraltar, a British territory isolated on the Southern tip of Spain, which voted 93% to remain in the Union, are by no means clear. However, thus far few observers suggest that any of this will lead to further unraveling of the European Union.
While Catalonia is featured in the headlines, and while some assert that the disturbances in the region contain some of the same elements that contributed to Spain's civil war in the 1930s, which led to the lengthy dictatorship of Francisco Franco, the Catalan independence movement, although currently the most prominent, is by no means the only identifiable European separatist campaign in existence. In March 2014, 89 percent of the voting public in Venice, Italy, declared in favor of independence. This led to the foundation of a party called "Veneto Si." South Tyrol, which prior to WWI belonged to Austria, became part of Italy after the Treaty of Versailles concluded. The majority of its population, 70 percent, still speaks German, and still prefers to be aligned with Austria. Similar situations have cropped up in other countries, including in Denmark, which has the Faroe Islands, France, which has Corsica and shares the Basque region with Spain, Belgium has Flanders, Germany Bavaria, and Ukraine the Donetsk People's Republic. Thus far none of these appear to have prompted an increased fear of fragmentation among the E.U.'s 28 member states.
History tends to suggest that the consequences of active separatist movements, while threatening cohesion, may, in fact, not turn out that way. Some of the most contentious, and substantially successful drives for independence in Europe actually resulted in expanded E.U. membership. The 1992 dissolution of Yugoslavia created seven new states, five of which have already applied for full E.U. membership. The 1993 breakup of Czechoslovakia, which created the Czech Republic and Slovakia, ultimately resulted in both countries becoming full-fledged members.
One campaign tactic pro separatist politicians like to use is to suggest that a newly independent state can continue to exist inside the E.U. without suffering any consequences. However, since the E.U. is pledged to respect the sovereignty of its existing members, it will support the heavy-handed efforts by national governments to subdue separatist attempts. Additionally, the process allowing new states to join the union requires unanimous consent of all existing member states. None of these have an incentive to reward a movement that could at some later date be encouraged to fester within their own boundaries.
Given today's turbulence contesting traditional governmental authority, we should probably consider revisiting a fundamental question: "What is a nation in the 21st Century?" (See Michael Goldfarb in the N.Y. Times International Edition of October 28, 2017). Is it a country? Is it the same as a state? Does it need to be ethnically cohesive? What does national sovereignty really mean? Albert Rivera, leader of the Spanish "Citizens Party," former member of the Catalan Parliament, decidedly anti-independence, and one of the organizers of the demonstration for national unity, puts it this way: "Catalonia is my homeland, Spain is my country and Europe is our future."
Many Europeans may agree with his sentiment.
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