02.02.2014 - 17:55
The economist and Columbia University Professor Xavier Sala i Martin criticized the attitude and position of Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, the president of the European Commission, to his face on the possible independence of Catalonia or Scotland. According to a story in El Mundo, Sala i Martin addressed Barroso in a private dinner on January 23 in the Hotel Intercontinental in Davos, where the World Economic Forum was being held, and which the economist regularly attends.
El Mundo says that the dinner’s aim was to talk about the EU and there were economists, investors, and business leaders present, in addition to civil servants from the United States and even the Norwegian Minister of Finance, Kristin Halvorsen. After Barroso’s presentation on European competitiveness, Sala i Martin got the microphone and asked, ‘You’ll give European citizenship to the citizens of the Balkans, who became independent after bloody wars, and you will expel those of us who already have European citizenship? Us, who don’t kill for secession, who only raise the question in a peaceful way, through voting?’
Barroso answered the way he always does when someone asks him about Catalonia’s independence process. ‘The EU is based on treaties, which are applicable only to the member states that have approved and ratified them. A new independent state, precisely due to the fact that it becomes independent, would become a third state with respect to the EU and the treaties would no longer be applicable there.’
Sala i Martin, according to the article in El Mundo, did not retreat and instead insisted, ‘We have European citizenship and you want to take it from us. You will have to explain your reasoning!’ Barroso did not answer further.
Sala i Martin recognized on Twitter that there was a ‘dialectical exchange’ with Barroso and announced that he would explain what he ‘actually’ said to Barroso when he got back to his hotel.
