The European Union is to take its first step towards making Iceland a member on Monday despite serious misgivings about further enlargement, EU diplomats said, according to dpa. Iceland handed in its membership application on Thursday, and EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday are expected to forward that application to the EU's executive, the European Commission, for a detailed analysis, according to officials from EU member states. The move is a largely formal one, since it comes before the technical investigation of Iceland's ability to meet EU standards and the political negotiation of its accession treaty. But it has been overshadowed by growing concerns over the whole concept of enlargement, both among diplomats and in European public opinion. According to EU diplomats, Germany is reluctant to open a potentially-explosive public debate on enlargement before elections in September, while France says that it would be better to wait until the EU's new set of rules, the Lisbon Treaty, is approved. The Netherlands is reluctant to consider more countries for accession until Serbia unblocks its application by handing over the last war-crimes suspects to international prosecutors. And some member states warn that it would be undiplomatic to forward Iceland's application to the commission just four days after it was received, when Albania, which handed in its application three months ago, is still waiting for similar treatment. Allowing Iceland to leapfrog Albania "would certainly get a bad reaction in Albania and might get it in other places too," one EU diplomat told the German Press Agency dpa. However, Iceland's supporters point out that the island already follows many of the EU's business rules as a member of the European Economic Area, and has a 1,000-year history of parliamentary democracy - making it a different case from the Balkans and Turkey. The ministers are expected to forward Iceland's application on Monday, and to promise to deal with Albania's one as soon as the country forms a government following June elections, diplomats said. Under EU rules, there is no deadline for the commission to produce its technical assessment of a country's readiness for membership. Commission officials say that, as a rule of thumb, it can take around one year, but that Iceland could be dealt with more rapidly. Once the commission has presented its report, EU members have to take the political decision to launch membership negotiations, which can then take years to complete.
