OUR question, ''Will Brussels treat us like a second-class nation?'' should surely be, ''Will Brussels accept us as a nation?'' This is the crucial issue.

In a letter published on March 20, David Martin, MEP and principal architect of the Europe of the Regions, referring to Scottish independence in the European Union, said that he preferred to deal with the politics of the possible and went on to explain that there was no precedent for a change of status by Scotland. He did not say that there was no provision for it.

On April 11, however, Murray Ritchie claimed that the European Constitutional Court, Commissioners, and Eurocrats would accept Scotland as an independent nation state.

Yet on April 14, Canon Kenyon Wright, chair of Scotland's Constitutional Convention's executive committee and presumably well aware of the options available, claimed that the independence debate was irrelevant in the context of the new Europe.

In fact, the principle of subsidiarity, whereby administrative power in the EU is to be established at sub-national levels, was enshrined in the Treaty of Maastricht. Westminster, which has reserved constitutional affairs, is therefore bound by an international commitment that cannot be revoked unilaterally by a Scottish or indeed even by a UK Government.

Scotland has featured in EU maps since at least 1984 as one of the 12 regions of Britain and, whether or not politicians choose to refer to it as a nation, its status in the EU remains equivalent to that of any other EU Region.

It may be that in the small print of some treaty there actually is provision for a change in status for regions of ethnic minority currently within member countries, but the reluctance of Scotland's MPs to desert London for Edinburgh suggests that this is not the case.

The implications are clear: as to the legislative powers of nation states in the EU continue to atrophy under the European Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice, the Regions will take on a new authority under a continental government at Brussels.

Scotland will therefore ultimately achieve independence from a Westminster Government, along with Great Britain's other Regions, whose devolution will develop gradually into such independence as is possible in the vast territorial unit that the EU is set to become.

Mary Rolls,

Crown Lane House, Jedburgh.

May 16.