Starting negotiations between Iceland and EU

The FINANCIAL — Another European country opens negotiations with EU, writes EU Business web-site. 

This is Iceland, with the contentious fishing issue and anti-EU sentiment on the island posing hurdles to an otherwise easy process.

"I feel that Iceland is making history today by formally starting the negotiation process," Icelandic Foreign Minister Oessur Skarphedinsson told a news conference.

The two sides launched talks on four of 35 policy chapters that Iceland must negotiate in order to comply with EU laws and promptly wrapped up two of them, demonstrating Iceland's already high level of integration with the bloc.

Hoping to seize on the early momentum, Skarphedinsson said he planned to open half of the chapters this year, including what he called the two "heavyweight chapters," agriculture and fisheries, and the rest in 2012.

Fishing is the source of discord between Iceland and EU fishing nations but a vital industry for the North Atlantic island, which applied for EU membership in 2009 in the wake of a catastrophic banking and economic meltdown.

"Today of course it was a small step, an easy step," Skarphedinsson said.

"Fisheries indeed will be very difficult because this is the first time that the European Union is negotiating with a country that comes to the table with fisheries as the big, vital, special need," the minister said.

Thanks to its membership of the European Economic Area, Iceland is already in compliance or partially linked with two-thirds of EU rules, said EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele.

"With that kind of alignment already achieved, one would indeed expect no shortcuts but indeed a fast process forward, building on the achievements already done," Fuele said.

But with polls showing a majority of Icelanders opposed to joining the EU, Skarphedinsson said people on the island are waiting to see the outcome of the fisheries negotiations.

"There is especially one thing that weighs on their mind, which is related to the psyche of the nation and to the soul of everyone in Iceland, and it is the fisheries," he said.

"They have to see the outcome of the fisheries before they are ready to commit themselves."

Iceland and the 27-country bloc are at odds over fishing rights with their so-called "mackerel war" heating up late last year after Iceland unilaterally multiplied its catch quota. Brussels then blocked fishing boats from Iceland.