A breakaway Catalonia would cause a domino effect that could splinter the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker warned yesterday, as the Catalan president faced a threat to his pro-secession alliance yesterday from independence hardliners.
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Mr Juncker said any such intervention by Brussels would lead to “chaos” in the bloc as Spain had not requested it, and explained that if Catalonia was allowed to separate, “others would do so too”.“I would not like an EU that in 15 years consisted of 98 states,” Mr Juncker said.
If there were 98 regions as members then the centre, Brussels, really would have all the power. Which is, of course,why the EU did so much work to try to get those regions to deal directly with Brussels, rather than through the nation states.
It should be possible. Does not Druncker attend a place of worship and publicly say his prayers every day? Sometimes more than once?
“My name is Jean-Claude Juncker and I am an alc…..”
Maybe he.prays for that in secret.
I suspect in fifteen years you will be able to count the EU members on your fingers.
Suddenly the fractured Europe trilogy isn’t seeming so unlikely, well apart from the alternate reality bit of course
Can he not see the irony of a Luxemburger objecting to the existence of small states?
Just imagine the fun of getting 98 “states” to agree to anything!! Nothing would ever get done… How quick can we make it happen?
BiC
No chance. Because the more states there are, the more QMV there will be. QMV shifts power to the federal centre – fewer “national” vetoes.
Junker can’t publicly advocate for carving up the large states(for hopefully obvious reasons). Is there any reason to not believe his public statements are meant to placate the proletariat while his actions are structured to achieve his federal goals?
As a matter of interest, did he just dream up the 98 number or is it based on something solid?