ABSTRACT
Scotland’s relationship with the EU has long been a political minefield. Although it would be tempting to attribute this to success of the SNP’s ‘Independence in Europe’ campaign, that is not the whole picture. Rather, the SNP and other critics of the previous constitutional arrangement merely exposed structural and procedural deficiencies that had existed for some time but that were all the more apparent as result of an intensification of European integration in the aftermath of the Single European Act (SEA) and the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Despite die principle of Subsidiarity, potentially Scots had insufficient influence over EU policy because decision-making resided within a European political arena from which political institutions in Scotland were for the most part at least one step removed \ As far as the (then) Scottish Office was concerned, the elongated chain of communication stretching between Brussels and Edinburgh had two significant ramifications. First, usually any input from the Scottish Office would have to dove-tail into a pan-UK position with the result that Scottish needs might be diluted or displaced altogether. Second, there was always the threat that the Scottish Office might not be consulted in time because of bureaucratic delays in London (or for that matter in Brussels) and there have been occasions when it was not consulted at all. Moreover, when officials from the Scottish Office attended inter departmental meetings with the lead department to agree a position on an EU policy proposal, there was the likelihood that Scottish Officials could be out-ranked and over-ruled by colleagues in London2. In effect there was an absence of political autonomy for Scotland but of greater concern, however, was the deficit of ministerial leadership.
