THE leader of a key European political group has promised to fight for an independent Scotland to be allowed back into the EU.

Lorena Lopez de Lacalle, president of the European Free Alliance (EFA), pledged that she and her fellow activists across 19 member states would be working behind the scenes to ensure the new nation’s re-entry.

The SNP is a member of the EFA which is an alliance of progressive social democratic parties committed to self-determination for small nations inside Europe.

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Alyn Smith, Christian Allard and Aileen MacLeod, the three SNP MEPs, sit with the EFA in the European Parliament where they form a larger political grouping with the Greens. EFA currently have 10 MEPs including Oriol Junqueras who was yesterday jailed for 13 years by a Madrid court for his role in the 2017 referendum in Catalonia.

Smith is EFA’s president in the European Parliament and after Brexit the SNP will continue to remain a member of EFA.

“Scotland could be out of the EU, but the SNP will still be in EFA and we will be doing all we can for Scotland,” Lacalle, a representative of Basuq party Eusko Alkartasuna, told The National.

“It is now more important than ever to be supporting Scotland and the SNP. The three SNP MEPs may not be sitting in the European Parliament but their EFA colleagues will be.

“They will be introducing motions and debates on Scottish independence. We will be holding meetings and organising bilateral contact in both the European Parliament and the Committee of the Regions and arguing for clear rules as to how a state can achieve independence and how to access EU membership. It is a matter of political will.”

She added that one EFA member, the NVA in Belgium, was also likely to become a party of government and would raise the issue of Scottish independence directly with the European Commission and the European Council.

Lacalle went on to say that behind the scenes EFA would be finding allies among small EU states such as Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia and Ireland to support Scotland’s fight for re-entry.

“Scotland has the right to be independent and I am sure Scotland will be independent. I think the sooner Scotland becomes independent the better. The longer Scotland stays with the UK the more it goes down and down,” she said.

“Regardless of whether Scotland is independent or not I think Europe should intervene now. Europe has to realise that countries such as Scotland and Catalonia becoming independent is good for the whole of Europe.”

“We will be pushing this in the European Parliament. The EU should settle a protocol on how to access to independence and how to become independent states.”

Lacalle spoke to The National as she attended the SNP’s conference in Aberdeen, where she will address a fringe event on self-determination in a changing Europe today.

She backed Nicola Sturgeon’s independence strategy through a referendum on terms agreed between the Scottish and UK governments.

But she also suspected the First Minister had a covert plan to combat Boris Johnson or any successive Prime Minister who rejected a Section 30 order request for Holyrood to hold a new vote on independence.

The National:

“The most important thing is the objective. If the aim Scotland has is independence then you have to take the best decision to secure independence and not put it into peril,” she said.

“We had that experience in Spain. We are not naive. Every single step has to be taken carefully and if the negative consequences are greater than the positive, then it is better to wait. If you go backwards it is very hard to go forwards. In the Basque country we had big majorities for independence and lost them.”

She added: “At the same time you are being cautious with the left hand you can be bold with the right hand, but not everyone should know about the boldness with the right hand.”

A Panelbase poll at the weekend put support for independence at 50% and that most Scots (45% versus 35%) believed the country would be better off economically in as an independent state in Europe rather than as part of the UK outside the EU.

Lacalle predicted that support for independence would further increase if Johnson or any successive PM continued to reject a request from the Scottish Government for a Section 30 order – which the First Minister said on Sunday would be made “in weeks”.

“This can help the independence case,” she said.

“We have been through this in Spain. Centralised states help to boost independence. The more they deny our rights the greater our case for democracy.”