ALMOST 100 people have responded to a call for ambassadors by the Europe for Scotland group – despite a typo in an email appeal sent out.
The group is seeking Scots who live or work in European countries and urging them to consider becoming ambassadors for Scotland.
Europe for Scotland seeks to ease an independent Scotland’s route back into the European Union if the country wants it, and is looking for people to take on the roles publicising the fact that Scotland did not vote for Brexit and, if independent, would seek to rejoin the bloc.
However, it has issued a correction to its initial email seeking ambassadors, telling recipients: “Thanks so much to so many of you who have responded to our call for ambassadors, and our apologies to everybody who tried to reach out and could not do so due to a typo in our previous email.
“If you wanted to write to us and your email was not delivered, the correct email address is info@europeforscotland.com”.
Despite this mishap, Andrea Pisauro, who is co-ordinating the hunt, told The National: “The response has been very good – we had more than 90 applications from all over Europe, both from Scots abroad and EU citizens.
“Broadly speaking, we are looking for a couple of ambassadors each from all big countries at the very least. Any ambassador from a small country is welcome as are larger groups from the largest countries.
“We haven’t had time to examine the applications in detail as we are still travelling throughout Italy, but we plan to do so starting from next week.”
Europe for Scotland is looking for individuals who would be happy taking on a number of tasks.
These include advising the group on how to tailor the overall strategy to an applicant’s own country and helping to grow the campaign and represent it there.
Next year, the group is also hoping to invite ambassadors to events that it plans to stage in Scotland, Brussels (below) and potentially other places in Europe.
The deadline for would-be ambassadors is Monday, with Scots in Europe or Europeans living in Scotland asked to tell the campaigners how they think they could help with the drive.
Europe for Scotland expects to be able to contact applicants in the last week of this month.
Pisauro said the early challenge of finding a forum to discuss the issue was likely to differ from country to country simply because of Brexit.
While people were generally aware that Scotland did not vote for the move, it was not something that was fresh in their minds.
“In a way Brexit made the UK situation a little remote from people’s lives,” he said.
“The understanding was OK – the UK went their own way, so it’s really none of our business now.
READ MORE: Europe for Scotland: Sign up and show support for an independent Scotland in the EU
“But then people think about the challenges they face to shift their attention away from the issue, because there are so many things happening here [in Europe] that are part of people’s lives, such as relatives dying and unemployment among the many major challenges.
He added: “Mostly we would like to start by identifying a strategy to have an impact on the public opinion of the country.
“Let’s make people more aware of [Scotland’s] tradition and culture because a lot of people are thinking only about Covid and economic problems, and they don’t really know much about the international situation.
“We want to try to find a way to get people’s attention, in an engaging way.”
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