Iceland walks out on EU membership talks

EurActiv ^ | 23 August 2013

[Olog-hai]

Iceland said yesterday (22 August) that a recent election that brought euroskeptic parties to power had been interpreted by constitutional advisors as a signal to stop EU accession talks. …

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.

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. …

[SueRae]

Good for them. After their financial disaster..and recovery, they are certainly better at self-determination than the EU.

[OldNewYork]

Go Iceland. You’ve got more wisdom and common sense there among your small population than in all the rest of Europe.

[headstamp 2]

Smartest thing they ever did unless they want to surrender their sovereignty.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

This is hilarious and monumental. Every time Iceland has told the EU to bugger off, Iceland has profited tremendously.

It all began when they had some corrupt (”too big to fail?”) private banks, that offered very high yields. So greedy Europeans poured money into those scams, who then went belly up with bad investments.

So the EU ordered the at the time meeching, liberal government of Iceland to pay that money back, by inflicting horrible taxes on the people of Iceland. Which its government was willing to do. Oh, Hell no.

The people created a referendum, and told the EU to take a hike. Then they arrested the bankers(!), which again horrified Europe, because bankers are supposed to be above the law.

And then they threw out their squishy, Europhile government, and replaced them with Euroskeptics. And the economy of Iceland is suddenly going gangbusters.

And *this* was the Euroskeptic government that the Porta-goose European Commission President José Manuel Barroso presented with an ultimatum to join the EU or quit?

A good analogy, I suppose, would be if Obama suddenly decided to “Executive Order Texas to return to Mexico.” Texans would likely not be real thrilled with that idea.

But what makes this all the better is that Iceland doing this is going to light a fire under the English government to hold a referendum on *leaving* the EU. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), Euroskeptic, led by Nigel Farage, is probably about to get yet another big surge of voters joining them.