Nationalist movements without a state and the European Union, 1979-1999

Research seminar with Francesc Mainzer Cardell, Universidad Compultense Madrid.

Commentator: Joana Duyster Borreda, University of Copenhagen.

Abstract

European integration played a pivotal role in the evolution of Western Europe during the second half of the 20th century. That period saw, at the same time, a tendency towards administrative and political decentralisation in countries such as Belgium, the United Kingdom or Spain, often spearheaded by movements representing stateless nations demanding more autonomy for their own regions. Those two processes, though apparently unrelated, influenced one another. Along the years their evolving nature has led to larger influence in the mindsets of the actors involved in them, with an example of that being references to European integration often playing a significant role in currently widespread Western European independence movements such as Scotland’s or Catalonia’s. 

Those movements gained traction from the mid-2000’s so it is of the utmost interest to take a look at the immediately preceding decades to try and understand how the ever-evolving process of European integration played a role in the shaping of those positions. 

Thus, the aim of this PhD project and this talk is to analyse in which way stateless nationalist movements in Western Europe reacted to European integration during the final decades of the past century as well as understanding how the nature of Europe’s advance towards political unity influenced those movements and their bids for more devolution, or even outright independence.