Iceland on Wednesday won formal backing from the European commission to open negotiations to join the EU, a green light for Reykjavik to moving the country toward membership.
European governments will still need to decide whether to support the EU aim. Some regard Iceland as a huge asset for the union and as Europe’s gateway to the Arctic, giving the EU a foothold in any future contest for the expected mineral and economic bonanza in the far north.
Iceland’s membership chances are clouded, however, by its dispute with the UK and the Netherlands over billions in lost savings when the country’s oversized banks collapsed in 2008.
“We fully support an Icelandic application to join the EU,” said a British government spokesperson, but added: “It’s essential they meet their international obligations under the deposit guarantee scheme.”
The British and Dutch governments compensated their savers to the tune of almost £4 billion (US$6.1 billion) when Iceland’s online Icesave bank collapsed. Negotiations aimed at getting Iceland to pay back the money are at a stalemate and the government in Reykjavik could fall if, as expected, it loses a referendum next week on the Icesave issue.
If, however, European leaders agree at a summit next month to open membership talks, Iceland could race ahead to become the 28th or 29th EU state.
Stefan Fuele, the European commissioner for enlargement, indicated that the negotiations could be wound up within 14 months because Iceland has long been part of the European economic area and already applies much EU law and regulation.
“I don’t see any dramatic problem,” Fuele said. “I hope today’s opinion boosts Iceland’s aspirations to join the EU. It will make [the EU] stronger.”
Despite the banking dispute, many leaders across Europe want to see Iceland in the union because of its strategic value and location in the north Atlantic.
“There [has been] a lot of discussion recently of the strategic importance of the Arctic area. This is where Iceland could be very useful,” Fuele said.
Foreign policy analysts have long predicted a contest between the US, Russia, Canada and Scandinavia for control of the mineral wealth and shipping lanes of the far north as global warming makes the frozen wastes more accessible.
“The EU is virtually absent from this big play,” said Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister. “Iceland will bring us more into Arctic issues that will be big.”
Iceland’s population is about 306,000, representing about 0.06 percent of the EU population, and produced 0.08 percent of the EU’s economic output. However, the country is seen as a disproportionately large prize in geopolitical terms.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RSS