Europe Day: Peace, prosperity and a progressive partnership

And as yesterday marked Europe Day, it only seemed apt to reinforce the point why, in an increasingly fractious and divided world, if we did not have the EU we would need to invent it.

Scotland, of course, will be a good news story for the EU when we rejoin. Our natural resources, our innovative enterprises, the spirit and generosity of our people are all things that fit the needs and wants of the European project. A project which I look forward to seeing us rejoin sooner rather than later.

To begin at the beginning though, what is Europe Day?

It commemorates the Schuman Declaration, a proposal by the French foreign minister of the day, to place French and West German production of coal and steel under a single authority.

The declaration by Robert Schuman on May 9, 1950 would result in the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (composed of France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) in 1951 and laid the foundations of today’s European Union.

Now, Europe Day celebrates peace and unity in Europe.

It might seem a long time ago to some, but let’s not understate the significance of what that moment meant. France and Germany alone had fought three wars over the previous 80 years. In living memory, both world wars had devastated whole swaths of the continent at the cost of millions of lives.

At the time, Germany itself was divided and the Iron Curtain had only recently been drawn from Szczecin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic. The threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present.

So to talk of peace and trying to maintain it may, at the time, have been optimistic. Yet for the nations of the European Union and its predecessors, there has been peace for more than 70 years.

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The economies of member states recovered as did their populations thanks to the ECSC and its successors. More eventually wanted to join the club (the UK application was vetoed twice by Charles de Gaulle in 1963 and 1967 before eventually joining alongside Ireland and Denmark in 1973), whilst former dictatorships such as Spain, Portugal and Greece were able to successfully transition to liberal democracy, in part because of the fruits of European community.

Today, along with the Western Balkans – the likes of Moldova and Ukraine – also aspire to EU membership.

As do the people of Scotland.

More than two-thirds of Scots want to rejoin the EU whilst 84% think the UK Government is handling Brexit badly.

Yet in these islands, neither the Tories, nor Labour nor even the LibDems, are seriously arguing for a return to the EU or the single market – in Westminster, it is the SNP who are the most pro-EU voice in these islands.

The benefits of EU membership are clear to Scotland. Membership means solidarity with a global A-team and equality with all EU states.

Freedom of movement means the freedom to live, study, work, love and travel across the continent. EU membership removes bureaucratic Brexit red tape which continues to hamstring our small businesses during a time of skyrocketing inflation.

Meanwhile, we will have a seat at the table in setting the standards and regulations of the world’s second-largest trading bloc. EU membership also secures workers’ and democratic rights which, as we have seen over recent days, months and years is being steadily eroded by the UK Government.

And for our scientists and innovators, our researchers and lecturers, EU membership means a return to participating and running in the highly successful Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe schemes.

Nor are these benefits a one-way street. Scotland can be the good news story to come out of Brexit for the EU. We are a progressive, pro-European country which supports the European project.

As the EU gears up to deal with the energy transition, Scotland can play its role as a key, secure and reliable partner in clean energy – whether it be green hydrogen, marine, tidal, wind power or just about any other means of renewables.

Our universities are among the best in the world, with five in the top 250.

Horizon membership will allow our researchers to innovate with colleagues across the continent in shaping the world of tomorrow.

Our high-quality exports in food and drink as well as in financial services, IT and our burgeoning space sector have a ready and willing marketplace with our European friends – trading links which go back centuries as Wallace’s letter to the Hanseatic League can attest to.

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In the international realm, we will be a ready and willing partner in Europe’s security architecture in the North Atlantic and High North; meanwhile, our feminist foreign policy and approach to the wellbeing economy can help advance democratic and civil rights around the world, as well as raise people out of poverty at home and abroad.

I could go on but I’ll end here for now.

What’s key is that Scotland has everything to gain by rejoining the EU as an independent state and everything to lose by being stuck in Brexit Britain.

So as we all keep working towards that common goal of independence in Europe, I wish you all a very happy Europe Day this year and every year – and once we get back, let’s make it a public holiday as well!