Catalonia is playing the EU card against Madrid:
ARTUR MAS, the leader of Catalonia, has a clear message for Madrid: He is serious about his threat to let the people of Spain’s most economically powerful region decide for themselves in a referendum whether they should remain a part of Spain.
In fact, he said in an interview this week, he would personally vote for independence if the opportunity arose. “Our ideal is to be part of the United States of Europe,” he said.
Venice, Italy, is thinking similarly:
Inspired by the nationalist aspirations of Scotland and Catalonia, pro-independence campaigners will hold a mass rally in the heart of the lagoon city on Saturday, calling for an urgent referendum to be held on the issue.
Indipendenza Veneta, a newly-founded pro-independence movement, says it expects several thousand people to turn up for the rally.
Then there's Scotland, of course.
As nations perhaps seek an exit from the European Union, the EU's desire to survive will make picking up these secessionist statelets more appealing.
I've long thought that this was a feature rather than a bug of the EU, when I commented on secessionist moves within Belgium and how the EU encourages such thinking:
There could be a Flemish Oblast and a Walloon Oblast to join with scores of other administrative entities.
This is classic divide and conquer.
Consider this incentive to divide a feature of the European Union rather than a bug. The Brussels transnational elites will laugh all the way to their new undemocratic empire while the silly people atomize their once-influential nation-states into little ethnic theme parks.
Let the people have their postage stamps and flags, the EU overlords likely think! The power will lie in Brussels, and who will be large enough to stop them?
The EU can't unify Europeans into a single Euro volk. They'll settle for breaking up the continent into small, scattered, principalities easier for an imperial government to control.
