AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would create the Scottish pound as a “precursor” to joining the euro, an SNP MSP has said.
Alyn Smith, the MSP for Stirling, told the BBC’s Radio Scotland Breakfast on Monday that an independent Scotland would commit to adopting the currency as a condition of joining the European Union.
Smith insisted that before this could happen a second referendum would be required to ask Scots if they were in favour of joining the Eurozone.
BBC journalist Martin Geissler put to Smith that Pedro Serrano, the EU ambassador to the UK, told the BBC that an independent Scotland “would not get anywhere near” joining the bloc unless it firstly adopted the euro.
Smith rejected Geissler’s claims that the SNP hadn’t answered the currency question, and urged listeners to read the Scottish Government’s whitepaper on EU membership.
“What we're looking for is a normal accession process,” Smith said.
“We're not the first country to accede into the European Union, so there's a well-trodden path that Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, umpteen others have gone through over the time, and there is a commitment to participate in economic and monetary union, yes, but there's no timescale attached to that.”
Smith was then asked if the SNP’s plan was still to create the Scottish pound, which he agreed, with Geissler then talking over him asking: “So, you won't join the euro?”
The SNP MSP said this would be done as “a precursor to join the euro anyway”.
“The commitment is to participate in economic and monetary union, and that's something that we will take on, of course we will, because that's what you need to do to accede into the European Union,” he added.
“Every European country, EU country, has accepted this, but there's lots of EU countries that are not members of the euro because their people haven't consented to it yet, and it's not been the proper time, so it's not the proper time for us, but you know what, we need an independence referendum before any of these things become real.”
Geissler then pressed the claim that Scotland would have to join the euro before joining the EU, with Smith pointing out that Sweden is in the EU but has not adopted the euro.
When the BBC journalist insisted any new member state “will have to adopt the euro”, Smith countered: “Not on joining the EU. That's flatly wrong, Martin.”
Smith added that there was no timescale imposed on any state acceding to the EU.
Asked if that meant an independent Scotland would “join on a promise”, Smith agreed, adding: “It's when the time is right, and that'll be.. I would say that there would need to be a second referendum on the euro for the people of Scotland to decide that.
“But look at how Ireland is booming right now within the eurozone, within the EU.
“I’d give my teeth to have Ireland's problems right now in terms of their economy, their finances. “There are lots of positive reasons for this, but that is for later. First, we need the referendum, then we need to talk about how the EU negotiations would go.”
The Scottish Government white paper on joining the EU, published in November 2023, also sets out that there is no timetable for members states joining the eurozone, and that it would only happen if conditions were met and the Parliament of an independent Scotland agreed “this was the right course of action to take”.
“The architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) explicitly stipulates that a country will only join the euro when it is ready, and the convergence criteria are there to ensure that introducing the single currency would be desirable both for the member state and the eurozone as a whole,” it reads.
The paper adds that one of the criteria is participating in the Exchange Rate Mechanism for “at least two years before it can qualify to adopt the euro”.
