22 June 2026
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Ministry for Foreign Affairs

Iceland's membership negotiations between 2009-2013

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European Union, 2012
Össur Skarphéðinsson, the then-Foreign Minister of Iceland, János Martonyi, the then-Foreign Minister of Hungary and the representative of the Hungarian EU Presidency, and Stefan Füle, the then-EU Commissioner for Enlargement. Photo taken in 2010 at the start of the accession negotiations.

Accession negotiations took place during 2009–2013 but were put on ice following a change of Government in Iceland.

The current coalition Government, made up of the Social Democratic Alliance, the Liberal Reform Party and the People’s Party which came into power after elections in late 2024, announced in its Government Platform that it intended to hold a referendum on the resumption of accession negotiations with the EU.

Iceland's EU accession application is legally valid despite the fact that the accession negotiations were put on ice. Its validity has been reconfirmed by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, in 2025 as well by a spokesperson for the EU Commissioner for Enlargement.

If Icelanders were to decide to resume negotiations it would be a matter for EU Member States to consider and determine the next steps.

The question about the application's validity is covered extensively in a special memorandum produced by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs for the Althing's Foreign Affairs Committee in August 2025 (in Icelandic).

The memorandum includes the following:

  • Iceland applied for EU membership 17 July 2009 with a formal letter from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
  • In June 2010, the European Council unanimously agreed to start EU accession negotiations and to grant Iceland the status of a candidate country.
  • In the spring of 2013, the government of the Progressive Party and the Independence Party decided to put negotiations on ice.
  • In March 2015, the then-Minister for Foreign Affairs sent a letter to the presidency of the Council of the European Union which spoke of stopping the accession negotiations completely and said that it was the firm position of the Icelandic government that Iceland should not be considered a candidate country.
  • Two parliamentary resolution proposals for a formal withdrawal of Iceland's EU membership application were submitted to the Althing, however neither was passed nor processed by the Althing.
  • A spokesperson for the Directorate-General for Enlargement and the Eastern Neighbourhood, which manages EU enlargement, said on 15 January 2025 that Iceland's application for EU membership was still considered valid as it had never been formally withdrawn.
  • Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, reconfirmed on 17 July 2025, while visiting Iceland, that the European Union considered Iceland's application to be valid.
  • The 2021 EU regulation on financial assistance for pre-accession identifies Iceland as a candidate country and confirms that the application is valid.
  • The European Union has never considered Iceland to have formally withdrawn its membership application.

 

See the Ministry for Foreign Affairs' special memorandum produced for the Althing's Foreign Affairs Committee (in Icelandic).

See the status of Iceland's EU accession negotiations in 2013 when negotiations were put on hold.

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Ministry for Foreign Affairs