86 / 169
THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
86
and supremacist demonstrations of the recently
elected President of the Generalitat de Catalunya
do nothing but confirm the connection be-
tween Catalan secessionism and European ul-
tranationalist movements.
The Catalan question is an internal matter of
Spain and has been acknowledged as such by
European leaders as a gesture of respect for
Madrid. The EU cannot logically mediate between
a Member State and one of its parts unless the
government of that country expressly calls upon
it to do so. It is, nonetheless, a European problem.
First of all because the Spanish constitution forms
part of community acquis and hence its violation
on the part of the autonomous government of
Catalonia constitutes a violation of European law
and the Treaties. Article 4.2 of the TUE states:
“The Union shall respect… their essential state
functions, including the territorial integrity of the
state…”. This is to say that the Treaty supports
and embraces the constitutional legality of
Member States as its own, to the effect that the
EU must never take a neutral stance on questions
of this nature but rather always clearly and firmly
defend the legality of the state affected.
Furthermore, the spectre of secession is not
confined to Catalonia. It is a problem that could
easily spread throughout practically ever corner
of the Union. Commission president Jean-
Claude Juncker has made it clear that the
European Union “does not need more cracks,
more splits”, and furthermore stated, “We
shouldn’t insert ourselves into what is an inter-
nal debate for Spain, but I wouldn’t want the
European Union to consist of 95 Member
States”. Many other regions could decide to fol-
low Catalonia’s example. Flanders in Belgium
and the Basque Country in Spain would be the
first likely candidates, but Corsica, Galicia,
Szeklerland (a region of Romania heavily popu-
lated by people of Hungarian descent), or even
Bavaria or various regions of Italy might do the
same. In short, the mere possibility constitutes a
nightmare for a project based precisely on unity
and the suppression of borders.
Nationalism in Corsica represents a signifi-
cant challenge to a country as centralist as
France. In the Corsican territorial election held
in December 2017, a coalition between an au-
tonomist party (Femu a Corsica) and a separatist
party (Corsica Libera) won 57 % of the vote on
a campaign platform calling for recognition of a
special status for the island in the French consti-
tution, equal status for the Corsican and French
languages, greater fiscal autonomy, amnesty for
“political” prisoners (serving sentences for acts
of pro-independence terrorism), and a special
resident status meant to dissuade outsiders
from buying up local property – only the first of
which has been conceded to date by Macron,
who has publicly underscored the island and
mainland’s “unbreakable union in the Republic”.
Other recent initiatives such as the referendums
held in Lombardy and the Veneto last October,
both of which garnered very strong support,
have focused more modestly on increasing re-
gional competences and the groups that organ-
ised them are far from posing, at least at the
moment, attacks on the territorial and constitu-
tional integrity of the state as has occurred in
Catalonia.
As the growing number of calls for greater
regional autonomy being voiced throughout
Europe could, at least in part, be satisfied by
giving regions a broader range of opportunities
to promote their interests and express their ide-
as within an EU framework, the Union should
consider restructuring the European Committee
of the Regions so as to give local and territorial
entities a greater voice in decisions affecting them.
Individual states can no longer be the sole pro-
tagonists in a political scenario in which regions