Accession of Iceland to the European Union: A Failure Beyond Repair?

Abstract:

The EU membership negotiations of Iceland (2009–2013), suspended sine die by Reykjavik after the parliamentary elections to the Althingi in the spring of 2013, were commonly assessed as unsuccessful mainly due to specificities of Iceland as a Nordic country, wary of the European integration and whose economic interests were hardly in line with relevant EU legislation.

The present article tries to balance the picture insofar as it concentrates on the conduct of the accession process of Iceland to the EU seen from the ‘Brussels’ side, and tries to answer if the process was conducted by the EU with enough leadership and energy.

It also gives some recommendations as to a possibility to relaunch the process.