Two people familiar with the matter said Iceland is considering holding a vote to reopen EU accession talks as soon as August, Politico reported.
Iceland’s decision comes as the bloc’s enlargement looks increasingly likely. Brussels is working on a plan that would allow Ukraine to gain partial membership status as early as 2027, and lead negotiator Montenegro wrapped up a tentative round of talks in January. Reykjavik’s ruling coalition has promised to hold a referendum to reopen talks by 2027, and geopolitical tensions, Washington’s decision to impose steep tariffs on Iceland and US President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Greenland have prompted speculation that the process could be moved forward even more quickly. Talks on Iceland’s EU membership were frozen in 2013.
The Icelandic parliament is expected to announce the date of the vote in the coming weeks, two people told Politico, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Icelandic and EU politicians have met frequently in both Reykjavik and Brussels recently. If Icelanders vote to resume talks, Iceland could become a full member state before other candidate countries.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos told Politico that the enlargement talks are changing, becoming more about security, belonging and maintaining capacity in a world of shared spheres of influence. Kos met with Icelandic Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir in Brussels in January.
Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with Icelandic Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir in January, saying afterwards that
cooperation between Iceland and the EU provides stability and predictability in a hostile world.
Von der Leyen visited Iceland last July, met Frostadóttir in Stockholm in the fall, and is scheduled to visit the Arctic again in March. Talks about strengthening cooperation and possibly restarting the path to EU membership began even before Trump returned to office.
Threatening rhetoric from the US (including a joke by Iceland’s ambassador-designate about Iceland as the 52nd state) has reinforced the sense that talks need to be rushed. An EU official noted that Iceland was mentioned four times in Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which has certainly drawn attention to the situation.
Iceland applied for membership at the height of the 2009 economic crisis, when all three of the country’s major commercial banks collapsed. However, the government froze accession talks in December 2013, as the country’s economy was recovering rapidly and economists were warning of a possible collapse of the eurozone. In March 2015, Reykjavik asked to leave the bloc. However, the geopolitical situation has changed significantly in the decade since.
Iceland is strategically located in the North Atlantic,
has no army of its own and relies on NATO membership and a 1951 bilateral treaty with the United States for its security.
The new reality and the economic benefits of joining the EU could improve public sentiment towards joining the bloc, and polls show support is growing.
However, there are also political obstacles to accession. Former Icelandic President Guðni Jóhannesson told Politico that one of the biggest obstacles could be fishing rights. Fishing is one of Iceland’s main industries and has been a major issue in previous negotiations. An EU official familiar with the situation said that it has always been a sticking point in the talks. However, there is a big difference now, and that is Brexit. Britain and Iceland have always clashed over fishing rights, and between the 1950s and 1970s the two countries were also involved in several violent clashes, known as the Cod Wars. There was also serious tension between the countries during the negotiations for Iceland’s accession to the EU, and Britain had problems with the amount of mackerel caught by Icelandic fishing boats. The dispute also led to the EU threatening trade sanctions on Iceland. With Britain no longer part of the bloc, fishing rights are no longer such a major obstacle.
If the Icelanders decide to resume accession talks, they could move forward quickly. Iceland is already a member of the European Economic Area and the Schengen area, which means it already complies with many EU laws. Before the talks were frozen, Iceland had completed 11 of the 33 negotiating rounds. Montenegro, which is currently furthest along among the candidate countries, only completed its 11th round in recent months. An EU official said that in theory it could take just a year to complete the talks. In practice, it is more complicated: after the talks are concluded, Iceland still has to hold a referendum on joining the EU. Depending on how long it takes to hold the referendum and what the geopolitical situation is, a year may be too optimistic. For Iceland, EU membership is more of a security issue than an economic one – it has the fifth highest GDP per capita in the world, so the prospect of joining the EU is not as attractive as for other countries aspiring to join.
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