On the euro issue this is one article from the Times yesterday
Alex Salmond?s repeated claim that an independent Scotland would inherit Britain?s opt-outs from the euro and passport-free travel in the European Union was badly undermined by three constitutional experts yesterday.
They told a House of Commons committee that if Scotland voted to leave the United Kingdom in 2014, it would lose all of its international rights and obligations while the rest of Britain would continue as before.
The experts? view flew in the face of the assertion from the Scottish government that Scotland would become a joint-successor state, along with the rest of Britain, to the existing international treaties and memberships.
They told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that Scotland would start with ?a clean slate?, potentially losing all of the UK?s opt-outs from the euro currency and the Schengen Agreement, which allows for passport-free travel, as well as its share of the UK?s budget rebate.
Jo Eric Murkens, senior lecturer at the London School of Economics law school, took issue with the Scottish government?s insistence that independence would herald the dissolution of the Act Of Union and reinstate Scotland?s historic status as a nation state.
?Nobody is seriously suggesting that we could go back to 1707,? he said. ?The legal entities that existed at the time would exist no more. Scotland would secede, and the rest of the UK would effectively continue as the UK so there would be no change south of the border. Dissolution does not correspond to international practice.
?When we look at the relevant precedent cases, particularly the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1990-91, it was very clear that the international community wanted Russia as the continuing state. A main factor in that case was the existence of nuclear weapons, and the international community wanted Russia to take control because they were scattered around the Soviet Union and it was very clear that they didn?t want small states with a nuclear ability.
?I think this is an exact parallel with the UK, and the international community would want the UK to continue and for Scotland to start afresh.?
Matthew Craven, director of the Centre for the Study of Colonialism, Empire and International Law at the University of London, confirmed that the only example of a state dissolving into its previous entities was the short-lived United Arab Republic, where Egypt and Syria came together from 1958-60.
?That was a very exceptional situation,? he said. ?In all other cases one would be thinking either the breaking apart and creation of two entirely new states, or a scenario where one part of it continues as the successor state.?
The experts also said that Scotland would have to reapply to join the EU, and while they would probably be fast-tracked, they would have to sign up to all of the mandatory rules of membership, such as accepting the euro and Schengen. ?There is no doubt in my mind that Scotland would qualify as a new member state, but my only issue is with the word ?automatically?,? Dr Murkens said.
?Scotland would not inherit the opt-outs to the euro and Schengen. The only two countries that have the opt-out from the euro are Denmark and the UK and those opt-outs were secured in the Maastricht Treaty negotiations in 1992. That offer has not been extended to any new member states.?
A Scottish government spokesman again insisted last night that an independent Scotland would inherit exactly the same international treaty rights and obligations as the rest of the UK, as equal successor states.