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Diplomats: EU to move on Iceland's membership bid despite doubts
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 24 - 07 - 2009


The European Union is to take its first step
towards making Iceland a member on Monday despite serious misgivings
about further enlargement, EU diplomats said, according to dpa.
Iceland handed in its membership application on Thursday, and EU
foreign ministers meeting on Monday are expected to forward that
application to the EU's executive, the European Commission, for a
detailed analysis, according to officials from EU member states.
The move is a largely formal one, since it comes before the
technical investigation of Iceland's ability to meet EU standards and
the political negotiation of its accession treaty.
But it has been overshadowed by growing concerns over the whole
concept of enlargement, both among diplomats and in European public
opinion.
According to EU diplomats, Germany is reluctant to open a
potentially-explosive public debate on enlargement before elections
in September, while France says that it would be better to wait until
the EU's new set of rules, the Lisbon Treaty, is approved.
The Netherlands is reluctant to consider more countries for
accession until Serbia unblocks its application by handing over the
last war-crimes suspects to international prosecutors.
And some member states warn that it would be undiplomatic to
forward Iceland's application to the commission just four days after
it was received, when Albania, which handed in its application three
months ago, is still waiting for similar treatment.
Allowing Iceland to leapfrog Albania "would certainly get a bad
reaction in Albania and might get it in other places too," one EU
diplomat told the German Press Agency dpa.
However, Iceland's supporters point out that the island already
follows many of the EU's business rules as a member of the European
Economic Area, and has a 1,000-year history of parliamentary
democracy - making it a different case from the Balkans and Turkey.
The ministers are expected to forward Iceland's application on
Monday, and to promise to deal with Albania's one as soon as the
country forms a government following June elections, diplomats said.
Under EU rules, there is no deadline for the commission to produce
its technical assessment of a country's readiness for membership.
Commission officials say that, as a rule of thumb, it can take
around one year, but that Iceland could be dealt with more rapidly.
Once the commission has presented its report, EU members have to
take the political decision to launch membership negotiations, which
can then take years to complete.


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