Breakaway to Join up again ?

[olddutch]

The Times reports

[ “A separatist party was on course to win the most votes in Flanders last night for the first time in a Belgian general election, increasing the prospect that the country will split into the Flemish north and French-speaking south. The New Flemish Alliance, was heading for about 29 per cent of the votes in Flanders on a promise to break away from Wallonia and become an independent member of the European Union.

Belgium was created in 1830 and is made up of 6.5 million Dutch speakers and 4 million French speakers. The two communities have become increasingly suspicious of each other, and each have their own political parties, television stations and newspapers.” ]

The world seems to be fragmenting into more and more smaller Countries. Various nationalist movements, such as the Flemish one in Belgium, the Scottish Nationalists, and the Plaid Cymru in Wales, are striving for national independence - only to plan giving that independence away immediately by joining the EU. Any thoughts on this apparent contradiction ?

[jake-the-peg]

Seems to me that a lot of smaller regions/countries have for a long time had a lot of their inhabitants unhappy about living under their larger more dominant regions.

The advent of the EU however has given them the prospect that they could actually, practically be independant within the framework of the EU.

The degree of self determination they would have as an independant nation within the EU would be much more than they currently enjoy so I don't see any contradiction there.

Not seen any actually do it yet.

If Flanders or Scotland for example were to and were to be sucessfull it would lend a lot of impetus to the others.

However they would need to make sure their finances are sound

[modeller]

These groups are too big to live together but are of sufficient size to be independent , especially within the European land mass where they have easy access to other countries.
I doubt if this applies to Wales and Scotland.

[jake-the-peg]

Not sure that that is relevent Ireland is independant and is isolated geographically

Scotland has A GDP per capita about that of France