ALEX Orr (Letters, October 16) exhorts the EU to intervene over the scandalous and draconian prison sentences for the Catalan politicians.
But he doesn’t say how. As things stand, the matter remains an internal Spanish matter over which the EU has no jurisdiction.
READ MORE: SNP and Plaid Cymru accuse Spain of breaching EU principles
Of course, should the verdicts be appealed all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, and it was to decide, as it should, that their human rights have been violated, then that would surely be a matter for the EU to determine whether Spain fulfils the required political standards for membership of the EU.
Let’s be clear: the EU can’t specifically intervene as Alex Orr would like; it only has the power to place sanctions on Spain’s membership, albeit to the potential – unlikely – point of exclusion.
The powers Alex Orr seems to think the EU has as an organisation simply don’t exist. Indeed, hasn’t that degree of federalism been resisted by the UK ever since the concept was first mooted?
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
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