Time to end tired old fallacy of post-independent Scotland joining Euro

It replays the tired old fallacy that an independent Scotland would have to join the single currency. Currently there are 19 of the 27 EU member countries using the euro. Denmark has negotiated opt-outs while seven do not currently fulfil the criteria for joining the Euro area.

Any country adopting the Euro first has to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) for two years. The ERM was set up to ensure that exchange-rate fluctuations between the Euro and other EU currencies do not disrupt economic stability. Participation in ERM is voluntary for non-Euro countries. Indeed, the EU does not have a formal timetable for countries joining the currency and noted that it is up to individual countries to calibrate their path towards the Euro.

Reinforcing this, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, said in 2017: “I have no intention of forcing countries to join the Euro if they are not willing or not able to do so”.

READ MORE: Scots attitudes to Union, Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon revealed in new poll

Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and has not yet adopted the euro or entered into the ERM. Euro membership was defeated in a referendum in 2003, and the country has no formal timetable for signing up. The EU has not exerted significant pressure on Sweden to adopt the Euro. This is a simple case of scaremongering, and Scotland could join the EU without needing to adopt the Euro.

Alex Orr Edinburgh Stephen Paton is quite correct in saying that Michael Gove’s ‘settled will’ indyref claim is nothing but a ruse, (‘Why Michael Gove’s ‘settled will’ indyref claim is nothing but a ruse’, August 9) as devolution itself was nothing more than a ruse to put Scotland back in its box by killing independence stone dead as the now Lord George Robertson claimed at the time.

The Scotland Acts cleverly boxed the Holyrood parliament by defining the range of powers that Westminster was not devolving and closed the lid by making the new parliament self policing with its presiding officer responsible for ensuring that it did not encroach on any matters retained by Westminster Leaving aside their knowing that the McCrone Report was hidden from the people of Scotland surely the ultimate act of contempt for Scotland and its new parliament was the unannounced agreement made by the UK Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Scotland on the eve of the inauguration of the Holyrood Parliament to transfer control over thousands of square miles of Scottish waters including several North Sea oil fields to England. It took just two parliaments for the people of Scotland to recognise that the Westminster based parties still completely controlled their Holyrood parliament before they resumed the quest for independence.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

The currency conundrum for an independent Scotland is very much an iterative one, in that there are several external factors that may/may not, mitigate against/for, any one solution, or indeed any one component solution.

Firstly, there is the option of a currency union with rUK to use the Great British Pound (GBP), with rUK headed by Boris Johnson, an incontinent liar, of vacuous morality, of variable creed, who has expressed his considered view of the citizens of Scotland as “verminous”, and who purveys unlawful acts, considering them to be simply an occupational hazard. His government is sufficiently supportive of him to render the term “currency union” a misnomer, and indeed perhaps better described as a “currency subjugation”.

Secondly, there is the option of simply using the GBP as an internationally freely available currency, but this is subject to the concerns that the rUK ONOB government’s mendacity would go far beyond the norms of international behaviour, and that it would somehow manage to drive austerity across the UK to levels, a newly independent Scotland simply could not accept.

This “Britain First” intent, would be to break any verminous hold onto the GBP by Scots, and/or cripple the necessary levels of divergence Scotland plc required.

Of the remaining options, there is the option of a permanent Scottish currency, which given the nihilistic nature of ONOB Head Johnson, would at least initially be confronted by attempts to subjugate Scotland back to rUK control, and potentially sufficient to stymie the economic divergence required.

The options essentially remaining would therefore appear to be the initial use of the Euro, or a Scottish currency initially pinned to the Euro or GBP, with committed support from the Eurozone/ECB, with the possibility of later change to the Euro. So, this brings in the EU membership question, which is closely tied into the currency conundrum. It certainly would appear that an initial pinning to GBP is an outlier choice that offers every incentive to the rUK government to stymie independence.

The only questions therefore appear to be whether the coinage is in Euros or Scottish Pounds, a relatively minor issue, but nevertheless an emotive one, and whether the future assets/liabilities of Scotland PLC are measured in Euros or Scottish Pounds.

There appears to be greater economic flexibility (value up/down) with using the Scottish Pound, but greater certainty (value up) with using the Euro. Scotland becoming an independent EU nation state, to reverse the decades of UK applied austerity, recovering from Covid-19, and dealing with climate change, suggests that going with the Euro would set Scotland’s course within an appropriate envelope of relative certainty.

Stephen Tingle
Greater Glasgow