Show caption When it comes to Catalonia, Angela Merkel is otherwise engaged and Emmanuel Macron is looking the other way. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images Catalonia As Catalonia crisis escalates, EU is nowhere to be seen Argument that Brussels has no standing in independence dispute is legally contentious and politically unsustainable Simon Tisdall Wed 4 Oct 2017 12.42 BST Share on Facebook

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Who will save the Spanish from themselves? As mutual rage grows, Catalonia seems to be heading off a cliff. Carles Puigdemont, the separatists’ leader, is vowing to declare an independent state on Monday, while bragging that he does not fear arrest. King Felipe had one shot at reuniting the country – and blew it with a one-sided, darkly scare-mongering speech.

Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, is not backing down either. He is threatening direct rule from Madrid and a mass purge if a Catalonian unilateral declaration of independence goes ahead. That is a recipe for violence far exceeding last Sunday’s street clashes with police.

The obvious candidate to cool tempers and mediate a negotiated way out is the European Union, the de facto guarantor of Spanish democracy since Spain became a member in 1986. Puigdemont, hanging from a hook of his own making, has repeatedly appealed for Brussels to intervene. “It cannot look the other way any longer,” he said this week.

Rajoy and his ruling conservatives would not like it but may accept an EU role when they contemplate the alternatives. Seen from outside, the imperative is to induce all sides to pull back, to defuse the crisis before it becomes irreparable. Solutions can be discussed later.

But the EU is nowhere to be seen. At this moment of acute peril for the European project, Jean-Claude Juncker, the notoriously garrulous commission president, has fallen silent. A spokesman’s brief statement on Monday sided with Rajoy and said, feebly, there was nothing Juncker could do.

A golden chance to pull back from the abyss was missed again on Wednesday when Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the commission, called for dialogue and an end to violence – but failed to offer assistance in, say, the form of an EU mediator, insisting it was an “internal matter”.

Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, who a week earlier sketched out a “profound” vision of an integrated Europe responsive to all its citizens, is looking the other way. If this were Crimea, say, or friendless, penniless Greece, Angela Merkel would be in full mediation mode by now. But when it comes to Catalonia, Germany’s chancellor, whose CDU is allied with Spain’s ruling party, is otherwise engaged.

The argument advanced by Brussels and its apologists that Catalonia is an internal Spanish matter and the EU has no standing in the dispute is legally contentious. But in a sense, that does not matter. The EU’s attempt to wash its hands of the crisis is politically unsustainable. If Rajoy sends the Spanish army to crush independence and seize control of Catalonia’s leaders and institutions, the ensuing uproar will force European leaders to get involved.

While it cannot directly intervene without being asked, the EU clearly has legal obligations towards 7.5 million EU citizens in Catalonia (as it has repeatedly claimed to have towards EU citizens in a post-Brexit Britain). Its explicit statement of confidence in Rajoy was possibly ill-advised in this context, since the prime minister cannot sensibly be viewed as an impartial or objective figure.

To pretend the EU has no skin in this dangerous game is plainly delusional. Amadeu Altafaj, Catalonia’s envoy to Brussels, says the commission’s credibility is already damaged. The reluctance of the centre-right-dominated European parliament to debate the issue (it finally discussed it on Wednesday) has made a nonsense of talk about a more democratically responsive EU.

The longer the EU refuses to help, the more political ammunition it will give its detractors, not least the hard-right, populist and xenophobic forces that came to the fore in recent elections in France and Germany. Spain’s attempt to stop Catalan secessionists by brute force also sends a problematic message to like-minded groups elsewhere in Europe that, until now, have stuck to peaceful campaigning.

Rajoy’s weekend police action is being investigated for human rights violations by the Catalan authorities, and possibly the UN too. Spanish national laws may have been broken. And Rajoy may also be in breach of Spain’s obligations under EU and international law.

Respect for the rights of national minorities is one of the EU’s core values, as expressed in article 2 of the EU’s founding treaty and article 21 of the EU charter of fundamental rights. Although the commission has no specific powers, member states do have general powers to ensure that the fundamental rights of groups such as the Catalans are protected in accordance with European and international law.

More broadly, the right of people to self-determination is a cardinal principle of modern international law, incorporated into the UN charter. It is not a new idea.

In 1918, Woodrow Wilson, the US president whose “14 points” speech set out principles for world peace, declared: “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.”