PREMIUM Cabinet Minister Lord Frost (R) chairs the first meeting of the Partnership Council followed by the eighth meeting of the withdrawal agreement joint committee with his EU counterpart Maros Sefcovic (L), Richard Szostak, Principal Adviser, Service for the AHEAD of the 2014 independence referendum, then European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said it would be "extremely difficult, if not impossible" for an independent Scotland to join the EU. Seven years later, the mood music in Brussels is palpably different. Now, from an EU perspective, the UK is the one causing problems not Scotland. EU member states may not welcome the idea of an already difficult EU-UK relationship becoming yet more unpredictable if the UK fragments. But that Scotland voted strongly for remain in 2016 is still much appreciated in the EU. Scottish politics looks rather sane and normal compared to Westminster’s politics over the last few years (even if the culmination of the Sturgeon-Salmond spat earlier this year caused some raised eyebrows in Brussels).