Scottish independence: Independent Scotland "will be granted automatic entry to EU" AN SNP government minister has again insisted an independent Scotland will gain automatic entry to the EU. Transport minister Keith Brown has repeated claim that an independent Scotland will gain automatic entry to the EU SNP minister adds Scotland "meets all the various critera" for EU membership Keith Brown reacted to new comments from a European Commission (EC) spokesman who suggested a potential new member would have to request accession from outside the EU. That suggestion comes just days after Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said a region that secedes from a member state would have to renegotiate "within the international legal order." Today, EC spokesman Olivier Bailly told BBC Radio Scotland that there are two steps. There is a secession process under international law, and the request for accession to EU member state under EU treaties. In the mean time, of course, this new treaty is not part of the EU since it has to make a request for accession. Mr Brown said the comment is different to previous responses by the EC. "It's simply our position, as it always has been, that Scotland will accede to the EU simply because we take on the same obligations and treaties that we currently have," he told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme. There is no process for countries to secede from the EU, I think that's an established fact, nobody is saying otherwise. So given that fact we would continue as an EU member and we would take on the treaty obligations. Obviously there would have to be negotiations on things like the representation that Scotland would enjoy and so on but we will take the position that the EU has put up until now. A press officer making a comment in response to a question is quite different from the official position of the EU which has been given formally in a series of answers to parliamentary questions. We are very clear that Scotland will accede to membership of the EU because that's what we are, we meet all the various criteria, we have the same law, the democratic traditions, we will accede to these obligations and rights in the same way as the rest of the UK will, because the rest of the UK will be in the same situation as Scotland. Mr Barosso earlier commented on the wider EU secessionist debate in response to a question by Italian federalist politician Mara Bizzotto. She asked if regional citizens would immediately lose their status as EU citizens, and the resultant rights and obligations, if the region secedes from the member state. Mr Barosso responded: "In the hypothetical event of a secession of a part of an EU Member State, the solution would have to be found and negotiated within the international legal order."