These are the key questions on EU and Brexit that must be asked this election

The SNP and Greens probably have the clearest European policies. Both opposed Brexit, including the trade and co-operation agreement Boris Johnson signed up to in December, and both want independence in the EU, while it remains unclear if the Alba Party will support the European Economic Area (EEA) option instead. However, challenging questions remain on the route to, and impact of, rejoining the EU.

The Tories support Johnson’s hard, immensely damaging Brexit – and have little or nothing to offer by way of softening any of the blows their UK-EU deal has resulted in. Labour not only voted for that deal – to avoid, they said, “no deal” – but are now barely challenging its impacts and have no clear policies on how they would change UK-EU relations compared to the damaging and confrontational set-up the UK Government has now established.

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The LibDems used to be a clear anti-Brexit, pro-EU party but UK leader Ed Davey told the BBC two months ago they were not a “rejoin” party. This caused some outrage in the grassroots and was followed by some damage-limitation explanation that in the “long term” the aim was indeed to rejoin. Both Labour and the LibDems are more comfortable, for now, talking about creating a more federal UK than talking about that federal UK rejoining the EU.

Five big questions should be centre stage in any discussion of Europe and the EU during the election.

1. How to tackle the damage from Brexit and the UK-EU deal?

Johnson’s deal and the 2019 Withdrawal Agreement have put an extraordinary and wide-ranging set of barriers and border challenges in front of sectors from fisheries to music and the arts, from tourism to financial services to agriculture to universities.

Trade with the EU has been falling since the deal came in, while Northern Ireland faces other challenges from the internal border within the UK that Johnson chose to negotiate. The Conservatives, in particular, should be posed the toughest of questions on why they have imposed such an economically damaging deal on Britain. And all parties should be asked what short-term changes should most urgently be made to tackle at least some of the damage. such as to align to EU plant and animal health rules, rejoin Erasmus and so on.

2. What should Scotland’s relationship be with the EU?

This is an obvious and a core question. For the pro-Union parties, the answer presumably is that it should be whatever the UK’s relationship with it is (although that is now one of Great Britain with the EU and a different Northern Ireland-EU relationship).

The Tories surely have to defend the relationship they are establishing – not only the economically damaging trade deal but the political and security damage being done by the the fractious and confrontational approach the UK Government is taking to EU relations. Both Labour and the LibDems need to say what they would do differently in the short and medium term.

The SNP and Greens need to be clear on what they see as the main steps to rejoining the EU after independence: how quickly might it happen; what will be needed in the transition period between leaving the UK and rejoining the EU; what will the implications of rejoining be (including for future relations, both political, economic and security, with the rest of the UK)?

Research done by the Scottish Centre on European Relations and other think tanks (including the recent report by the Institute for Government) have argued that an independent Scotland could rejoin the EU relatively swiftly – probably within 4-5 years, with a tailored EU association agreement providing the basis for the Scotland-EU relationship in the meantime.

There is no need for an independent Scotland to first join the EEA – it is an alternative, not a transition route (and one that would leave an independent Scotland without a voice at the EU’s top tables and facing a customs border to the EU). Will parties engage on these issues or attempt to side-step them?

3. What border challenges will an independent Scotland in the EU face?

This is another key question and not an easy one for the different parties for different reasons. If an independent Scotland was an EU member state while the current UK-EU trade and co-operation agreement remained in place, then that would be the main basis for the Scottish-rUK border (although in fact, more precisely, for the Scottish-England and Wales border). This would be an external border of the EU. The visible damage and challenges such a border can impose have been seen since the start of the year.

An independent Scotland would not face an identical challenge to Brexit in that it would re-open borders with the EU’s single market by rejoining it and its customs union (and benefitting from the EU’s international trade deals). It could attract more foreign direct investment in this position and it would benefit from being part of EU free movement of people again.

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It might have a double benefit of being part of the UK-Ireland common travel area as well. And it could further ease some of the border challenges with the rest of the UK by doing a range of bilateral services deals. Even so, Scotland trades three times more with the rest of the UK than the EU today and this argument will be used by the pro-Union parties. But there are also serious challenges here not least for the Conservatives: if Brexit is, in their view, not damaging to the UK despite the hard borders their Brexit deal set up, then it is not logical to argue a hard Scotland-England border is damaging.

The LibDems will be able to make a more consistent argument here and, in principle, Labour could too but that would surely require Labour to start critiquing the UK-EU trade deal that they voted for. Meanwhile, the SNP and Greens need some serious analysis of the costs that borders will inevitably impose and what the counter-acting benefits may be in the shorter and longer term.

4. What currency would an independent Scotland use in the EU?

The currency question is a wider one for the independence debate than just its EU dimension. But there are important EU issues here.

The SNP’s current policy is to initially use the pound – sterlingisation – before moving, at some point, to a new Scottish currency. In the EU context, the first key question is whether an independent Scotland could join the EU while using the pound (and without the actual agreement of the Bank of England to using sterling).

In terms of the EU treaties, this looks difficult. EU member states have to show they can aim at price stability through their monetary policies and, if they are outside the euro, they must treat their exchange rate with the eurozone as a matter of common concern. Sterlingisation would not allow this to be done. Whether this would be a complete block to rejoining the EU until Scotland had its own currency is, however, a political question as well as a treaty question.

If Scotland had met all the other EU accession criteria and was ready to join once the treaty was ratified (likely to take one to two years), it could conceivably ask for a short transition period, with a clear plan outlined as to how and when a Scottish currency would be introduced, during which it might use the pound during its first two or three years in the EU. This would be an unprecedented situation and hence a political decision for member states.

Any accession candidate country would, of course, have to commit to joining the euro. But an independent Scotland would be unlikely to meet the criteria for joining the euro for some years. So it would be expected to join the EU either with its own currency or in transition to its own currency. Whether Scotland would then, like several other member states, stay indefinitely using its own currency (notably like Sweden) is again an open question.

Pro-independence parties need clear lines on these questions for EU accession while pro-Union parties are likely to pose challenges around whether currency questions could delay accession.

5. Will debt and deficit block an independent Scotland from joining the EU?

This is another question for the wider independence debate as well as having a specific European context.

Even for member states outside the euro, EU debt and deficit rules apply, including the 3% government deficit rule. However, the Covid crisis has upended member states’ finances, as it has elsewhere. And, at least until 2022, the EU’s debt and deficit rules are suspended, with the main focus on how to implement the big multi-billion euro recovery fund.

It’s clear member states are not going to get close to the old EU debt targets in the next few years. There is also debate about changing these rules, so by the time an independent Scotland was rejoining, it might face a different situation. It’s also the case that here too a transition period may be negotiated – albeit on the deficit that would need to be very clear and not very long (as Croatia did).

Debt and deficit issues will remain a core question in the constitutional debate, and in the EU debate. There are questions on these issues that should be asked during the Scottish election – but also asked of how the UK will manage its own finances in the future. So while European issues have not yet figured in any detail or depth in the Scottish elections, in the face of the damage of Brexit, and the centrality of the constitutional debate, it is vital that these big questions do come to the fore.

Kirsty Hughes is director of the Scottish Centre on European Relations www.scer.scot