MP urges Iceland to withdraw EU membership application

Sigríður Andersen, a Centre Party member of Iceland’s parliament, has called on the government to formally withdraw Iceland’s application to join the European Union, mbl.is reported.

She said this would be the most sensible and straightforward course after a recent referendum, arguing that the government must clearly follow the result. She also said it was unacceptable for uncertainty to remain over the application’s legal effects.

“It is by far the wisest and cleanest thing for this government to do: simply proceed clearly and withdraw this application,” Andersen said on the Dagmál programme hosted by Andrés Magnússon.

Withdrawing the application would establish that Iceland no longer had a valid membership application pending with the EU, she said. If Icelanders wanted to revisit membership in a decade or later, a new application could then be submitted from scratch, since the negotiating objectives attached to the original application might have changed significantly.

Pawel Bartoszek, a member of parliament for Viðreisn, took a less definitive position. He said withdrawal had both advantages and disadvantages. It would clear the way and avoid future uncertainty over whether old negotiating objectives and reservations were still valid.

However, if Iceland applied again in the future, every EU member state would have veto power over whether Iceland could rejoin the group of candidate countries. Bartoszek said this could be an argument for leaving the current situation unchanged.

He stressed that he did not believe it was time to restart the membership process and said voters’ recent guidance should be respected.