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As Spain falls apart, Europe is tongue-tied

Almost all EU leaders keep mum, while Commission stands by Madrid and MEPs can’t even decide whether to debate Sunday’s chaos.

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, MAÏA DE LA BAUME AND QUENTIN ARIÈS

The EU thought calling the Brexit referendum was a mistake. Now, Catalonia has shown that squashing a referendum could be even worse.

The Spanish government’s violent, and largely failed, effort to suppress the illegal independence vote on Sunday left officials in Brussels flummoxed, caught between their obligation to support Madrid and the rule of law, and an inescapable imperative to condemn the violence against unarmed citizens seeking to exercise their democratic right to freedom of expression.

After more than 24 hours of silence from senior EU leaders — a striking delay in the era of live-tweeting and nonstop news cycles — Brussels came out solidly on the side of the Spanish government and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. They called the vote “not legal” and branded the dispute “an internal matter,” while at the same time calling for dialogue and an end to confrontation.

EU officials, however, did not suggest any ideas for how to defuse the tensions and pointedly warned officials in Catalonia they would find themselves expelled from the EU if they seceded from Spain.

“Just spoke to @MarianoRajoy,” European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted at 5:21 p.m. on Monday, more than a day after photos and videos of Spanish police trying to suppress the vote in Catalonia by force flashed around the globe. “Sharing his constitutional arguments, I appealed for finding ways to avoid further escalation and use of force.”

By that point, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had not issued a personal statement. But at a regularly scheduled midday news conference, the Commission’s chief spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, said: “Under the Spanish Constitution, yesterday’s vote in Catalonia was not legal.”

“For the European Commission, as President Juncker has reiterated repeatedly, this is an internal matter for Spain that has to be dealt with in line with the constitutional order of Spain,” Schinas continued.

He also added a sharp warning should Catalonia secede via a legal referendum in line with the Spanish constitution: “It would find itself outside of the European Union” — despite the repeated declarations of loyalty to the EU from the pro-independence Catalan government.

In Barcelona and beyond, there was sharp criticism by the independentistes of the roughly 24-hour silence in Brussels that elapsed before Schinas’ comments.

“The @EU_Commission unable to condemn Spain’s violence,” Aleix Sarri Camargo, a Catalonian aide in the European Parliament, tweeted. “All those big words, all that grandstanding for nothing. This is how the EU dies.”

Amadeu Altafaj, the Catalan government’s representative to the EU, told reporters in Brussels that: “We are disappointed as a government.”

Altafaj added: “It is also disappointing that during the midday briefing there was not a single word on the 893 people who were injured. These are EU citizens. We are not talking about any country at the end of the world. These are 893 Catalan and EU citizens that were injured.

“The feedback that we are receiving from Catalonia today is that people are between saddened by this statement and upset. We are talking about a very pro-European region. The credibility and reputation of the EU is being eroded by these kind of statements,” Altafaj continued. “Neutrality is not neutral anymore.”

The EU, however, has played a role in brokering other regional disputes. And some experts said there was an opportunity to do so in Catalonia provided that Brussels and Madrid recognized it would not work to simply dismiss as illegal the desire for a referendum and independence.

“The EU leadership should talk with the Spanish government, and say ‘it’s not only a Spanish affair, it’s a European one as well,’” said Stephan Stetter, a professor of international politics and conflict studies at the Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich. “The EU could have a positive mediation role in all of this.”

Stetter said it would be a mistake to think that negotiating would somehow legitimize the independence movement.

“It has to be legitimized, because obviously, this movement exists,” he said, adding that simply calling it illegal was counter-productive. “It is very legalistic, and that’s not the way you deal with these kinds of issues because it’s very emotional. It’s identity politics, which is not positive, but it matters a lot.”

The EU, by threatening not to recognize an independent Catalonia, also creates a risk of Brussels being seen as denying the rights of Catalonians as European citizens. Instead, Stetter said officials should focus on negotiations how to expand Catalonia’s autonomy within Spain, and on the fact that more than half of Catalonian citizens did not vote.

“We are so used to seeing the United Kingdom or Spain as a nation-state but these are not nation-states,” Stetter said. “They are supra-national institutions themselves.”

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani was the last of the three top EU leaders to issue a statement, saying he had spoken to Rajoy and that the Parliament would hold a “debate on Constitution, rule of law and fundamental rights in Spain in light of the events in Catalonia.”

Tajani’s announcement followed demands earlier in the day by several political groups for a formal debate at the Parliament later this week during its plenary in Strasbourg.

Several supporters of Brexit highlighted the EU’s backing of Madrid and lack of criticism of the violence by the Spanish government. “EU supporters wilfully ignore violence in Spain against Catalans,” Nigel Farage tweeted. “This will be the EU way of dealing with dissent in the future.”

For Brussels, which has come through a maze of recent political crises, Catalonia looks like a no-win situation.

While the EU has had roles in helping resolve the dispute between Ireland and Northern Ireland and in trying to mediate the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, it has generally stayed out of political fights within member countries — especially the large Western European states.

But while it is far from clear what good could come of Europe inserting itself in a national dispute, or how the EU might do so, inevitably not getting involved would also carry a political cost. There is also the risk of being accused of hypocrisy given the willingness of Brussels in recent months to chastize eastern European countries over their internal political disputes.

No wonder then, that the Commission pleaded for calm in Spain even as it offered no solutions.

“Beyond the purely legal aspects of this matter, the Commission believes that these are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation,” Schinas said. “We call on all relevant players to now move very swiftly from confrontation to dialogue. Violence can never be an instrument in politics. We trust the leadership of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to manage this difficult process in full respect of the Spanish constitution.”

National leaders in Europe were also caught in a bind, and several had to calibrate their responses based on regional separatist sentiment in their own countries.

Among the first to speak out against Spain’s crackdown was Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium, which faces constant pressure from nationalists in its Flanders region. “Violence can never be the answer!” he tweeted.

Many leaders expressed deference to Rajoy, realizing that they could potentially end up in his shoes for one reason or another.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday afternoon that he had spoken to Rajoy. Macron expressed his support for the Spanish constitution, saying he would only deal with his counterpart in Madrid.

The largest bloc in the Parliament, the European People’s Party which includes Rajoy’s Popular Party, sat on the fence, saying it would not oppose a debate in Parliament, but also not endorsing one.

Those in favor of the debate included Gianni Pittella, head of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, the second biggest group, who told POLITICO that the Parliament urged all parties “to sit down and work together for a peaceful and responsible solution in the framework of the Spanish constitution.”

Kati Piri, a Dutch Socialist MEP, called on Brussels to take a strong stand. “EU must condemn disproportionate violence used by Spanish police & offer mediation in serious political conflict,” she tweeted.

The Greens, issuing the call for a formal debate by MEPs, called on the Parliament to “express a clear rejection of violence” and “clear support for a negotiated solution to the conflict.” For the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group, Guy Verhofstadt was quick to tweet that “only a negotiated solution is the way forward.”

At the news conference, Schinas disputed a reporter’s assertion that the Commission was late to react.

“I dispute your statement that it took us long for that statement, because it is us who determine the timing and agenda of our statements, nobody else,” he said. “So I don’t know what is late [or] is early to you.”