For Scotland to match the EU's excessive deficit threshold, large spending cuts or revenue increases would be required
This chart places Scotland's deficit in the context of both the EU's excessive deficit threshold and the UK's deficit and quantifies what it would take to close the gap to either of those (or to eliminate the deficit entirely).
To simply be "no worse off than we are today" (if assuming liability for just a population share of the UK's accumulating debt), an independent or fiscally autonomous Scotland would need to match the UK's per capita deficit levels - a £14.3bn challenge on 2024/25's numbers.
Whilst meeting the 3% excessive deficit criteria is not a pre-condition for joining the EU, the requirements of chapter 17 of the acquis communautaire must be met. This means that even before joining the Eurozone, Excessive Deficit Procedures (EDP) can apply. Poland, Hungary, and Romania are cases in point - non-Eurozone EU members such as these can have their EU funding suspended (rather than fines being applied). Meeting the 3% deficit threshold is a £19.4bn challenge on 2024/25's numbers.
If Scotland were independent, borrowing levels would be heavily scrutinised, particularly if attempting to establish a stable independent currency that could be aligned with the Euro. Under those conditions, a strong case can be made that doing more than "just" meeting the 3% excessive deficit threshold would be required. The scale of the challenge to fully eliminate the deficit is shown here within that context - a £26.2bn challenge on 2024/25's numbers.
These scaling figures are all based on the chosen year's GDP. It should be noted that (for example) increasing taxes or reducing spending may slow GDP growth.
Growing GDP faster than spending (but still growing revenue in line with GDP) would be another way of closing the deficit gaps. For example, if revenue as a percentage of GDP remained the same, a 16.5% reduction in spending (measured as a percent of GDP) would require a 19.8% rise in GDP over a period where spending remained static