Scotland and Catalonia would face very real challenges in making a seamless transition to EU membership after independence

Independence campaigners in both Scotland and Catalonia have advocated retaining their EU membership post-independence. Merijn Chamon and Guillaume Van der Loo assess the legal basis on which subnational entities could maintain EU membership after declaring independence. They write that while the EU treaties make no explicit reference to this situation, it would be difficult for a seamless transition to take place. This is partly because EU accession negotiations could only be concluded with a fully recognised state, which would inevitably entail a gap between the establishment of a region’s independence and their ability to conclude negotiations over EU membership.