Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland Sign Memorandum on Self-Determination

Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland signed a memorandum of self-determination.

First ministers of Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland Michelle O’Neill, Rhun ap Iorwerth, and John Swinney signed a memorandum of mutual understanding in which a right of the regions to self-determination is fixed. The document was signed at a meeting in Cardiff, TASS writes.

As follows from the text, excerpts from which television channel Sky News brings, the leaders called the government of Great Britain “to prepare, to plan, and to provide constitutional changes in each jurisdiction,” so that the regions would have a possibility to organize referendums of an exit from the United Kingdom. In the memorandum it is said that Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland see their future in the composition of the European Union. In it also it is noted that the first ministers intend to strengthen cooperation with one another on questions of the economy.

A summit in Cardiff was conducted two days after President of the United States Donald Trump stated at a meeting with Prime Minister of Ireland Micheál Martin in Dublin that he would like to see a unification of the republic with Northern Ireland. Prime Minister of Great Britain Andy Burnham on 27 August in the course of a trip to Belfast excluded the conducting of a referendum of a unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.

By the information of television channel RTÉ, O’Neill, Rhun ap Iorwerth, and Swinney participated in the meeting not in the quality of first ministers of Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, but as representatives of the national-republican party Sinn Féin, the left nationalist Party of Wales (Plaid Cymru), and the Scottish National Party correspondingly. Earlier deputy first minister of Ulster Emma Little-Pengelly stated that O’Neill does not possess powers to sign any documents in the quality of the head of the region without her consent. The system of power in Northern Ireland in correspondence with the Belfast Agreement is arranged so that for the adoption of important decisions a support both of the first minister and of his deputy is necessary, who represent different national-religious communities — Catholic republicans and Protestant unionists.