{"id":109480,"date":"2026-08-23T22:29:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T22:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/109480\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T22:29:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T22:29:19","slug":"the-european-country-that-could-point-the-way-for-britain-to-rejoin-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/109480\/","title":{"rendered":"The European country that could point the way for Britain to rejoin the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain may have left the European Union<\/a>, but elsewhere in the North Atlantic another fiercely independent island is contemplating the journey in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Next Saturday, Icelanders will vote on whether to restart negotiations to join the EU, more than a decade after their last attempt foundered. It is not yet a referendum on membership: if negotiations produce a deal, Icelanders would vote again on whether to accept it. Polling suggests the first hurdle will be close, with a recent survey putting support for talks at 53 per cent.<\/p>\n

Yet the exercise could be instructive for Britain. Iceland<\/a> is showing how a country that once decided it could manage perfectly well outside the EU can reconsider as circumstances change \u2013 and, crucially, how it can do so without immediately confronting voters with the binary question of membership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe union that the UK left doesn\u2019t exist anymore,\u201d says Mika Aaltola, a Finnish MEP from the centre-right European People\u2019s Party and vice-chair of the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly.<\/p>\n

Aaltola points to the transformation wrought by Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a>, Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> trouncing of the international order and open threats against allies<\/a>, as well as growing concerns about the Arctic<\/a>. Security and defence, once peripheral to the EU project, have become increasingly central. Indeed, Aaltola\u2019s own country, Finland, was neutral for most of the post-Second World War era but changed its tune after Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion, joining Nato alongside Sweden.<\/p>\n

For Iceland, the change is particularly stark. A Nato founding member but with no standing army, it sits strategically between Europe, Greenland and North America. Trump\u2019s threats against Greenland have unsettled Icelanders, while Russian ships have been operating around the island and its infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Iceland already has an unusually close relationship with the EU. Through the European Economic Area (EEA), it is part of the EU\u2019s Single Market and adopts much EU legislation, while it is also inside the Schengen passport-free zone. But it has no vote when many of the rules it follows are decided.<\/p>\n

\"MikaThe current EU is not the one Britain voted to leave 10 years ago, says Mika Aaltola, a Finnish MEP and vice-chair of the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly (Photo: Vesa Moilanen\/AFP)<\/p>\n

That makes accession considerably easier. The EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos has described Iceland as a \u201cspecial case\u201d and suggested negotiations could take just one or two years, potentially allowing it to enter alongside Montenegro in 2028. Brussels is also signalling flexibility over the obstacle that killed Iceland\u2019s previous bid: fishing. That could involve a carve-out.<\/p>\n

None of this means Britain could simply follow Iceland\u2019s route. The UK is vastly larger, left the single market and has spent years diverging from EU arrangements. Rejoining remains politically remote.<\/p>\n

But Iceland illustrates two potentially important lessons.<\/p>\n

The first is timing. Iceland applied for membership in 2009 amid the financial crash, froze negotiations in 2013 and subsequently withdrew its application. Now a radically different geopolitical environment has reopened a question that appeared settled. The Government had promised a referendum by 2027 but accelerated it after Trump\u2019s tariffs and threats against Greenland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Likewise, Britain\u2019s relationship with Europe need not therefore be considered permanently fixed by the fraught politics of 2016. A future security crisis, economic shock or further retreat by Washington from Europe could create a similar political window.<\/p>\n

The second lesson is process. Icelanders are not being asked simply to choose between \u201cin\u201d and \u201cout\u201d. They are being asked whether their Government should discover what terms are available. Only then would they decide whether those terms are good enough.<\/p>\n

\"HOFN,Brussels is signalling flexibility over the fishing issue, which killed Iceland\u2019s previous bid to join (Photo: Sean Gallup\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Aaltola believes Europe itself may increasingly move towards more flexible forms of integration, combining economic freedoms with areas such as military mobility and defence-industrial co-operation. \u201cI don\u2019t like talking about rejoining the European Union,\u201d he said, arguing that the bloc of a decade ago no longer existed. Britain would instead be \u201cjoining something new\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Britain, such sequencing could eventually offer a way through the political paralysis surrounding Brexit \u2013 perhaps initially around the single market, security and defence rather than full membership.<\/p>\n

There is already a multi-speed Europe: some EU countries use the euro while others do not; some take part in Schengen and others have opt-outs. The pressure of enlargement to Ukraine and the Balkans is encouraging Brussels to consider still more differentiated arrangements.<\/p>\n

That could create opportunities for Britain. But Aaltola says London would also have to bring something to the table. Britain wants market access, but \u201cthere needs to be some cherries on the offer from the UK as well\u201d \u2013 with its defence capabilities an obvious bargaining asset<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year, in a blow to closer alignment on defence, talks on the UK\u2019s participation in the EU\u2019s \u201cSecurity Action for Europe\u201d defence fund collapsed and are yet to restart. However, officials have signalled willingness for a more tailored solution on such key issues. That could point the way to more flexibility on other issues.<\/p>\n

His other advice is political. Rather than allowing every move towards Europe to become another skirmish in Britain\u2019s Brexit wars, he argues that respected figures from different parties should develop a strategic approach to the relationship.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, he warns, \u201cthe domestic little politics is going to be bothering us and nothing goes forward\u201d. Britain needs people capable of presenting \u201ca strategic plan for the whole world, for Ukraine, for Iceland, for Norway, for the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n

Iceland is not Britain, and even Iceland may vote No next weekend. But its referendum shows something easily forgotten in Britain\u2019s seemingly endless Brexit debate: European relationships are not frozen in time. Countries change. The EU changes. And sometimes a question that appeared to have been answered can return in a very different form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain may have left the European Union, but elsewhere in the North Atlantic another fiercely independent island is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[157,13,1469,32810],"class_list":["post-109480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-european-union","tag-iceland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117147190306194595","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}