Skip to content

Iceland-EU Fast-Track Comments “Bad Timing”

han-gert-pottering_eu

Hans-Gert Pottering

President of the European parliament Hans-Gert Pottering has sharply criticized EU commissioner Olli Rehn, calling Rehn’s statement that Iceland would likely be fast-tracked into European Union membership by 2011 “bad timing”.

Pottering told Finnish paper Aamulehti that the focus of the EU is to get the highly-controversial Lisbon Treaty passed into law. “Now is not the time to talk about the further enlargement of the union,” Pottering said, noting that Rehn’s comments could put the process in jeopardy.

Iceland, ravaged by the worldwide economic meltdown, is considering several options, including EU membership, using the euro as its currency and pegging the Icelandic króna to the Norwegian króna. An exploratory committee has been established by the new Red-Green Socialist government that will explore EU membership and report its findings on April 15th.

Finnish parliamentarians Ville Itala and Anneli Jatteenmaki defended their countryman Rehn, saying Pottering could not preach about freedom of speech while silencing Rehn.

Related posts:

  1. European Union Rift Over Iceland
  2. Iceland To Become EU Member by 2011
  3. Iceland Constitution Changed For EU Membership
  4. Iceland Parliament To Vote On EU Membership
  5. EU To Open Membership Talks With Iceland

Posted in Independant People.

Tagged with , , , , , .

1 comment

By NewsGuy – February 5, 2009

One Response

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

Continuing the Discussion

  1. European Union Rift Over Iceland | The Right Perspective linked to this post on February 6, 2009

    [...] called Rehn’s statement to The Guardian that Iceland would become an EU member by 2011 “bad timing” that could not only jeopardize the application process but the controversial Lisbon Treaty [...]

You must be logged in to post a comment.

« »