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L’Islande s'éloigne de son projet d'adhésion à l’UE

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Published 23 August 2013, updated 26 August 2013

L'arrivée au pouvoir de partis eurosceptiques devrait interrompre les négociations d’adhésion à l’UE du pays nordique.

The foreign ministry said it had received an opinion from its constitutional advisors that the government was not bound by a 2009 parliamentary vote to launch the membership talks.

"After receiving this opinion the foreign minister has decided to consider dissolving the negotiation committee," the ministry said in a statement, quoted by the AFP news agency.

On a recent visit to Brussels, the new Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson was told by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to decide “without further delay” whether it wanted to continue accession negotiations or abandon plans to join the EU.

>> Read: Barroso tells Iceland to make up its mind on joining the EU

The committee's dissolution effectively signals the abandonment of these negotiations.

On 27 April, Iceland held elections, inflicting to the ruling pro-European Social Democrats the the biggest defeat any ruling national party has suffered since independence from Denmark in 1944.

Gunnlaugsson, 38, is Europe's youngest democratically elected head of government. Since 2009, he has led the Progressives, a centre-right and liberal party affiliated with Liberal International.

The Progressive Party draws most of its support from farmers and fishermen. In coalition with the Independence Party (see background), the Progressives oppose EU membership.

In May, the new government announced a halt to the country’s EU accession talks until Icelanders vote in a referendum within the next four years on whether they want membership negotiations to continue.

The decision of Iceland to stop the accession talks can be seen as bad news in Brussels. Croatia's recent accession gave EU leaders the opportunity to boast about the attractiveness of EU membership, despite the economic and sovereign debt crises.

Iceland was put on a fast track to EU accession, as it had already taken on board much of the EU legislation as member of the European Economic Area (EEA). It formally applied for EU membership on 16 July 2009 and started accession talks only one year later. The process has taken much longer for any other applicant country.

>> Read: Iceland gatecrashes EU antechamber

But Iceland is a special case, as the country’s powerful fishing industry is in deep conflict with the EU over fishing quotas. The Commission says it can accommodate Iceland’s “specificities”, but in fact the differences between Reykjavik and Brussels are not only of technical but of political nature.

The EU considers that Iceland is overfishing and that the island nation should accept strict quotas. Iceland says it has more experience in fishing that the Union itself and that it could teach Brussels best practices.

Recently, Iceland backed the Faroe Islands in a fishing quotas conflict with the EU and objected to the EU position in the strongest terms.

>> Read: Herring loss sparks EU-Faroe Island trade spat

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Background: 

Iceland was hit severely by the 2008 global financial crisis and economic downturn that followed. In the summer of 2009, Iceland's parliament backed the government's plan to begin accession talks with the European Union. Only one year later, the country started EU accession talks

With the approach of the elections, in January 2013 the government decided to put on hold negotiation over the “difficult” chapters relating to fisheries, agriculture, right of establishment and services, and on free movement of capital.

The vote was favourable to the Independence Party, which has participated in every government between 1980 and 2009, and to the Progressive Party, its main rival and partner in previous coalitions. Both parties are against Iceland joining the EU or the euro.

Before taking the post of prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, leader of the Progressives, said that that his cabinet intended to halt his country’s accession negotiations, pending a referendum on his country’s relation with the EU.

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