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Analysis
The EU Keeps Losing the North Atlantic Because It Prices Enlargement Backwards
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This is an op-ed written by an external contributor. All views expressed are the writer's own.
On 29 August, Iceland redrew a map Norway had drawn thirty-two years earlier.
Iceland rejected reopening EU accession talks by 52.8% to 47.2%. The margin was narrow; the map was not. Reykjavík voted Yes, while the Northwest, Northeast and South voted No.
Norway had drawn the same divide in 1994: Oslo voted Yes, while Nordland, Troms and Finnmark voted No. Nationwide, Norway rejected membership by 52.2%.
The map exposes the political economy Brussels keeps mispricing. Capitals encounter Europe as access - to markets, mobility, institutions and opportunity; fishing, farming and resource-dependent regions encounter it as authority - at the harbour, the quota, the farm and the land.
Integration diffuses its gains nationally; sovereignty is ceded locally, visibly and often irreversibly.
Greenland entered with Denmark despite overwhelming local opposition
In the North Atlantic, fisheries are jurisdiction as much as industry. The self-governing Faroe Islands remained outside when Denmark joined the European Communities in 1973, chiefly because of the Common Fisheries Policy.
Greenland, unable to choose separately, entered with Denmark despite overwhelming local opposition; after gaining home rule, it voted to withdraw and left in 1985.
Four cases, different constitutional routes, one fault line: resource sovereignty.
Yet the Union expanded east, south and north through Sweden and Finland while the North Atlantic remained outside, rejecting neither Europe nor integration but the price Brussels attached to membership.
Norway and Iceland already inhabit much of its legal and economic order through the European Economic Area, which applies the four freedoms, internal market legislation, competition and state aid rules; both also participate in Schengen.
What remains outside is precisely where sovereignty carries the greatest political value: the Common Fisheries Policy, Common Agricultural Policy, customs union, common commercial policy and Economic and Monetary Union.
The EEA is not a waiting room for membership. For Norway and Iceland, it is membership's strongest competitor, delivering much of integration's economic return while retaining sovereign control. The accession model was built for states that need the Union more than the Union needs them.
Norway and Iceland reverse that equation: Brussels is no longer the gatekeeper but the bidder.
After rejecting the EEA, Switzerland integrated bilaterally into much of the EU's economic order and later withdrew its dormant membership application. The Bilaterals III package, signed in 2026, deepened that integration while preserving Swiss policy autonomy.
Membership would have to preserve the franc, neutrality and direct democracy, with targeted safeguards for labour and agriculture.
Absorb new members without weakening integration
Accession should be priced on three axes: readiness, absorption cost and strategic return - a state's capacity to function inside the Union, the institutional, fiscal and political cost of admission, and its contribution to European power.
The Copenhagen criteria recognised the Union's ability to absorb new members without weakening integration; enlargement policy never priced the inverse risk of exclusion.
Copenhagen asked whether the Union could absorb a member. Strategic Accession asks whether the Union can afford not to acquire one.
Not Every Accession Is the Same
The Union's enlargement horizon now runs from the Western Balkans through Ukraine and Moldova to the South Caucasus.
Montenegro and Albania still require convergence; Serbia still faces rule-of-law and regional normalisation requirements; Bosnia and Herzegovina requires deep institutional reform, while Kosovo remains a potential candidate.
Ukraine brings immense geopolitical value alongside the burdens of war, reconstruction, a vast agricultural sector and substantial fiscal demands; Moldova combines convergence with geopolitical consolidation.
Georgia holds candidate status, but its process is frozen after democratic backsliding and the government's decision to suspend it until 2028.
Armenia has neither applied nor become a candidate, but has legislated an accession path and is preparing an application while remaining inside the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union; an EU course therefore entails geopolitical realignment as well as convergence.
Brussels has elaborate machinery for readiness and absorption: chapters, clusters, benchmarks, monitoring, transition periods and financial support. It has no equivalent machinery for strategic return. Montenegro is an accession project. Norway is a strategic acquisition.
Merit should govern eligibility; strategy should govern pace and terms.
Preserving the fiction of accession at Cyprus's expense
Turkey belongs to neither category. It is strategically consequential, but under present conditions accession would add liabilities, not European power. Ankara does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus, occupies territory of an EU member state and remains at odds with the Union's democratic standards and foreign policy.
The Union's error is not keeping Turkey out but preserving the fiction of accession at Cyprus's expense: Cyprus does not block Turkish membership; Brussels sacrifices Cyprus to avoid declaring that accession has failed.
What Strategic Accession Requires
Norway's 1994 accession treaty codified differentiation by preserving Norwegian sovereignty and sovereign rights over petroleum resources, including state participation, resource management, production policy and fiscal terms within Community law.
Fisheries were treated differently: agreements with third countries were to pass under Community management, while fishing resources around Svalbard, Norway's Arctic archipelago, would fall under the Common Fisheries Policy.
Brussels understood Norwegian oil as Norwegian sovereignty. It understood Norwegian fish as European policy.
Strategic Accession preserves the Union's non-negotiable core: democracy, the rule of law, judicial independence, the internal market, competition and the primacy of EU law within Union competences.
The Union should be rigid about what makes it a Union and flexible about what merely makes it uniform.
Because conservation of marine biological resources under the Common Fisheries Policy is an exclusive EU competence, a northern settlement must entrench EU conservation standards alongside coastal sovereignty and sovereign rights in the accession treaty and, where necessary, through treaty adjustments under Article 49, the Union's accession clause.
Shared stocks are jointly managed; EU environmental and internal-market rules, including science-based conservation requirements, remain binding, guarding against disguised protectionism.
Oslo and Reykjavík retain decisive authority over access to their waters, domestic quotas, ownership safeguards and the national structure through which resources are exploited.
Tetain treaty-protected restrictions
All EU Member States except Denmark are required in principle to adopt the euro once they meet the convergence criteria; if that obligation blocks Norwegian or Icelandic accession, a permanent Danish-style opt-out should preserve the krone and króna.
The Åland Islands, Finland's autonomous Swedish-speaking archipelago, likewise retain treaty-protected restrictions on property ownership and business establishment. Agriculture, ownership and other constitutional interests can receive targeted, permanent safeguards.
Norway would bring one of Europe's principal energy suppliers into Union decision-making, together with Arctic territory, maritime reach, defence industry, military capability and fiscal weight.
Iceland would bring a central North Atlantic state into institutions whose rules it already applies, strengthening Europe's position across the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap and the maritime routes linking the Arctic, North America and Europe.
Greenland and the Faroe Islands require a different route because neither is an independent state eligible to apply separately for EU membership.
Any deeper framework with Copenhagen, Nuuk and Tórshavn must preserve self-government and resource control while spanning trade, investment, security, research, infrastructure and critical materials.
The Faroes already seek a broader EU relationship beyond their trade, fisheries and research arrangements; Greenland remains associated with Europe after its negotiated withdrawal from the Community.
Together, the four sit astride key maritime approaches between continental Europe, the Arctic and North America, with major fisheries, critical resources and jurisdiction over increasingly contested northern waters.
The logic extends beyond the North Atlantic to Canada, Britain and, eventually, Israel. Article 49 limits accession to European states, excluding Canada and creating a separate eligibility threshold for Israel.
Britain presents a different problem
Prime Minister Mark Carney is exploring an associate relationship between Canada and the EU spanning trade, mobility, defence, energy, critical minerals and research. Canada needs no institutional, democratic or economic transformation; the Union seeks capabilities Canada already possesses.
Britain presents a different problem: the state that eventually rejoins may not have today's constitutional shape. Brexit reproduced the centre-periphery geography, with London, Scotland and Northern Ireland voting Remain while the United Kingdom overall voted Leave.
Now, political leaders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are coordinating around self-determination and constitutional change.
The Union could regain parts of the United Kingdom before the United Kingdom returns: an independent Scotland would have to seek membership, while the European Council has recognised that Irish reunification under the Good Friday Agreement would place a united Ireland within the EU.
If the United Kingdom itself reapplies, its return would restore a major economy, a nuclear arsenal, a permanent UN Security Council seat, global finance, intelligence, military capability and scientific capacity - European power the Union has already lost once.
Territorial and political obstacles presently foreclose Israeli accession. Yet Israel already forms part of Europe's security architecture through missile defence, intelligence, cyber, space, defence industry and innovation; membership would institutionalise that strategic reality.
More than 55% of Israel's Jewish population is estimated to qualify in principle for citizenship in an EU member state by descent, underscoring ties geography alone obscures.
The North Atlantic needs European terms that reflect the value of bringing it inside. These states and territories are already embedded in Europe's economic and strategic order; keeping them outside is a failure to distinguish principle from habit, unity from uniformity and procedure from power.
Shay Gal is Founder and Principal of Line of State, a strategic practice working with governments, institutions and decision-makers on strategy, risk, access and security in high-stakes environments. He is on X at @shayGal84.
