Iceland Thaws to EU

Let’s pivot away from the hot, arid oil-producing middle-eastern country to a cold, damp, hydrothermal-rich country in the middle of the Atlantic. This week we’re going to look at Iceland and what their future could hold. With continued American threats against their Arctic neighbor still ringing in their ears, on March 6th, Icelandic Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir announced that Iceland would hold a referendum on membership in the European Union in August of this year. This is a big leap for a country that decided to stop accession talks in 2013. However, the past few years have shown the value of being a part of something larger. While previous recent enlargements, such as Sweden and Finland joining NATO or Georgia's increasing desire to have a closer relationship with the EU,  is due to Russian aggression, Iceland’s pivot to Europe could be the first due to Trump’s calls for American hegemony in the Arctic. 

But joining the European Union is no easy feat, and that’s by design. Candidates are signing up to a supranational economic alliance that requires giving up some sovereignty, so leaders in Brussels need to be sure those nations really want it. The years of negotiations are intentional, but to even apply to be EU members, a country must satisfy what’s known as the "Copenhagen criteria” which are: stable democratic institutions, a functioning market economy, and the capacity to actually implement EU law. These requirements were set in 1993, against the backdrop of the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe to hold back a flood of candidates as they rebuilt their states along largely western democratic, free-market norms. Then comes the screening process, a lengthy negotiation process covering all aspects of administration and economic standards, and finally a unanimous approval from all existing members of the EU and a majority of the EU Parliament.

Crises generally force nations to form close partnerships with other nations to help soften the impact from whatever they’re facing. Iceland first applied to join the EU in 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis that saw its banking sector essentially collapse. Talks opened the next year, but Iceland’s economy recovered faster than anyone expected, and a Eurosceptic government stopped negotiations in 2013 and resumed Iceland’s history of straddling both American and European spheres of influence. Icelanders remained skeptical through at least 2017, but, like with most other Europeans, the mood shifted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with a plurality supporting EU membership. By early March a majority supported EU talks for the first time ever. For a small country with no standing military, and whose defense has been outsourced to NATO for over 75 years, increasing American attacks on European institutions (as well as direct attacks on governments Trump  deems as hostile), it was bound to move the needle. 

Prime Minister Kristrun Frostadottir's center-left coalition announced the referendum on March 6, with a simple question on the ballot: “Should negotiations on Iceland's accession to the European Union continue?" If “yes” wins then a second referendum will confirm the result and talks pick up where they left off in 2013. Accession should be relatively quick, as Iceland’s economy is already largely integrated into the EU with participation in both the EU single market and the Schengen agreement. However, one issue will likely be participation in the Common Fisheries Policy, which would require Iceland to open its waters to EU fleets; no small ask for a nation where fishing is closer to national identity than economic sector.

Just look up the Cod Wars. 

But there could be other pitfalls. The EU accession process is one of the most elaborate institutional gauntlets in modern diplomacy. Thirty-five separate policy areas — the acquis communautaire — covering everything from financial regulation to fundamental rights. A candidate country doesn't negotiate the rules. It negotiates how and when it will comply with rules that already exist, because with 450 million citizens and a GDP that would rank second in the world if it were one state, the European Union has the upper hand (something that Brexit never considered). But, thanks to its earlier negotiations and cultural affinity towards Europe, Iceland and the EU are largely aligned on the “big ticket” items.  By the time negotiations stalled, it had already satisfied 19 of the 35 areas with a further six that were closely aligned. Only three, agriculture & rural development, free movement of capital, and fisheries required substantial talks. In theory, negotiations should pick right up as if they never stopped.

Ignoring the 14 year “time-out” in negotiations, Iceland’s path to potential EU membership is the normal route a country takes. It applies, negotiates over a period of years, and then becomes a member. If the countries have relatively little to negotiate thanks to already being largely on the same page, that could take as little as a couple of years, such as when Austria, Sweden, and Finland joined in the mid 90s. If you’re not as aligned, such as Croatia, it could take as much as 8 years. But exceptions can be made. 

Ukraine applied for membership in the European Union on February 28, 2022, only four days after Russia’s invasion. Eight EU heads of state endorsed the idea of an accelerated accession process and by June 17th, the Commission recommended candidate status, essentially leapfrogging countries who had been working for years to reach that point. It was obviously political, and there’s nothing inherently wrong in that. Ukraine has long had a desire to join the EU and NATO, and that western focus angered Putin, who still considers Ukraine, either literally or figuratively, his. The EU wasn’t declaring that Ukraine satisfies the Copenhagen criteria, just that its future was European and Russia did not get to dictate Ukraine’s future. Still, even with the massive political push to bring Ukraine closer to Europe’s orbit, several reforms would be required: judicial independence, anti-corruption measures, anti-oligarchic legislation among them.

In a normal timeline, and even in the best of times, Ukraine has a long road ahead of it and while its attention is rightfully focused on its own survival, years of talks are likely in store after Russia withdraws. 

While EU treaties limit membership to a European state, it doesn’t define that anywhere, and while Turkey is largely southwest Asian in culture and geography, it straddles the Bosphorus and exists in mainland Europe as well. Turkey applied to be EU members in 1987, back before it was even called the European Union. Formal accession negotiations opened in October 2005. By 2016 they were effectively frozen. The EU's General Affairs Council noted in 2018 that no further chapters could be considered for opening or closing. The process is technically alive. Nobody seriously believes any progress will be made until democratic reforms are put in place, which likely will not happen as Erdogan remains President. 

The 2016 coup attempt and the subsequent purges — more than 150,000 people detained or dismissed from public service — moved Turkey sharply away from the governance standards the Copenhagen criteria require. Press freedom collapsed. Judicial independence eroded. Annual Commission progress reports became increasingly critical documents that Ankara largely ignored.

Democratic backsliding alone doesn't explain the full picture, though. The Cyprus dispute sits underneath all of it. Turkey doesn't even recognize Cyprus as a state. A bold claim if only for the fact Cyprus, as a EU member, has to vote to allow Turkish membership. Add France, Austria, and Germany each carrying domestic political reasons to resist Turkish membership that had nothing to do with Copenhagen, and the picture gets messy fast.

What makes Turkey analytically useful is the evidence that this process is not strictly a merit-based queue. Political will on both sides has to be sustained simultaneously, across years, through multiple election cycles, across member states with competing interests. In other words, you have to really want it. Erdogan used the accession process as a domestic tool, or a means to an end, to weaken military and judicial institutions. When the EU stopped being useful to him, he stopped pursuing it.

Iceland, Ukraine, and Turkey each illuminate a different dimension of the same process. Iceland is what normal looks like when political momentum tracks economic conditions. Ukraine is what happens when the EU decides enlargement is a security instrument rather than a reform checklist. Turkey is what happens when political will erodes on both sides and the process becomes a diplomatic artifact — technically alive, functionally finished.

Iceland's vote in August is genuinely uncertain. The fishing question will dominate the campaign, but the deeper issue is whether Iceland’s 400,000 citizens want to trade some degree of sovereignty for security in a moment when the traditional guarantor of that security is making territorial threats against their neighbor.

That is not an abstract question about institutional design. It is the same question every small country on Europe's periphery is asking right now: what does the next decade's architecture look like, and where do you want to be standing when it takes shape?

The EU accession process is slow by design. Iceland's referendum is a reminder that the decision to start walking is its own separate calculation — and one that has nothing to do with what happens after.