Economic Woes Spur Separatists in Europe\'s Pockets of Prosperity

LONDON - Europe's enduring economic crisis is providing a spur to separatist movements in some of the Continent's most prosperous regions, with voters being encouraged to divorce from their debt-burdened national governments and go it alone.

Sunday's municipal elections in Belgium, where the separatist New Flemish Alliance triumphed in Dutch-speaking Flanders, were the latest indication of a pro-independence trend that could redraw the map of Europe.

Separatism is also on the rise in Spain, in Britain and in Italy, where protestors turned out in Venice this month to demand a referendum on establishing an independent Venetian Republic.

In Italy's South Tyrol, which has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, thousands marched in April to demand independence from Rome.

In Spain, where Catalans have marched to support a break with Spain, Artur Mas, the Catalonian regional president, plans to hold a referendum on independence.

In the count ry's Basque region, separatists are looking forward to a likely victory in elections next weekend.

The separatist trend has been strongest in prosperous regions of Europe where there is growing resentment at having to fund the less well-off.

That has exacerbated long-standing frictions between French-speaking and Dutch-speaking Belgium, between Barcelona and Madrid, and between the north and south of Italy.

“Europe is facing an economic crisis,” John Bruton, a former Irish prime minister, wrote in The Irish Times. “This crisis is causing stress in the vicinity of long-buried fault lines. The blame game is in full swing.”

Bart De Wever, the victorious Flemish nationalist leader in Sunday's Belgian election, said before the vote: “The Flemish have had enough of being treated like cows only good for their milk.”

In Edinburgh on Monday, David Cameron, the British prime minister, and Alex Salmond, the Scottish nationalist first minister, signed a deal to hold a referendum on Scotland's independence by the end of 2014.

Scotland is one of Britain's poorer regions. However, nationalists say that would change if the profits from North Sea oil went to Edinburgh rather than London.

Like separatists elsewhere on the Continent, Mr. Salmond has no plans to take an independent Scotland out of the European Union. He has, however, pledged to keep the British pound in preference to adopting the ailing euro if his referendum campaign is successful.

Independent Scots or Venetians or Catalans would face a barrier to European Union membership if they opted to break away.

Mariano Rajoy, Spain's conservative prime minister, reminded separatists on Sunday that they could be shut out of the E.U. where the admission of new states requires the unanimous agreement of existing members.

“If you are outside Spain and outside the European Union you are nowhere, you are condemned to nothingness,” he sai d.

The separatist tide might ebb with the recovery of Europe's national economies. Even now, support for breaking away is uneven. Polls indicate just over half of Catalans support independence from Spain, but two in three Scots oppose breaking up the 300-year-old union with England.

Germany's Der Spiegel nevertheless believed the Belgian vote was symbolic in a European Union where solidarity among member states was rapidly disappearing.

It quoted the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung as saying: “In a precarious situation in the heart of the euro crisis, these new regionalist movements represent the danger of renewed political instability.”

Meanwhile, Ireland's John Bruton advised, “However difficult this may be to accept in Scotland, Flanders or Catalonia, it might be wiser to agree to sort out the economic crisis first and then deal with issues of separation, and/or of rearranging national boundaries, later.”