PANEUROPA WELCOMES DEBATE ON EU ACCESSION IN ICELAND

The EU offers protection and advantages for smaller and medium-sized states in a world with aggressively assertive great powers.

Iceland will hold a referendum on resuming accession negotiations later this year. Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir announced this a few days ago. Rainhard Kloucek, President of Paneuropa Austria, and Vice-President Stefan Haböck welcome the decision in Reykjavík and are pleased about the revived debate surrounding the European unification and enlargement process.

The threats from the USA towards Greenland and its allies in Canada and Europe, Russia’s war of annihilation against Ukraine, or the increasingly powerful authoritarian systems: small and medium-sized states are coming under increasing pressure.

Norms of international law, agreements, and principles such as territorial integrity are gradually being replaced by the law of the stronger. For smaller and medium-sized states, this poses a danger; for some, it has now become a matter of survival.

“From the geopolitical Paneuropa approach to European unification, Iceland’s accession to the EU would be just another step towards a truly united Europe,” says President Rainhard Kloucek.

“The EU particularly benefits smaller and medium-sized states: it gives them a voice in the European and global decision-making process and protects them from bullying by great powers,” emphasizes Vice-President Stefan Haböck.

Kloucek and Haböck are astonished that some political groups and commentators in Austria would rather bow to great powers than act as equals within the EU.

Although Iceland suspended the accession process in 2013, primarily due to the issue of fisheries policy, it is integrated into the EU single market and is a full Schengen member. The (pro-European) government of the island nation emphasized that the island nation’s interests can be better represented within the EU and with like-minded countries.