European Union leaders are expected to give the go-ahead for Iceland to begin talks to join the 27-country union later this week, Reuters quoted EU diplomats as saying today. "Having considered the application... (the EU) decides that accession negotiations should be opened," said a draft statement expected to be approved by EU leaders at a summit in Brussels on on Thursday. The statement reviewed by EU foreign ministers on Monday stressed the need for Iceland to meet commitments on overhauling its financial services sector. Icesave, an Icelandic bank, collapsed in 2008 with the losses of $5 billion of deposits, including many from British and Dutch investors. The EU's executive Commission recommended in February that talks should be launched with Iceland but set no entry date as Britain and the Netherlands still had to resolve a dispute over the funds lost by Icesave's collapse. Iceland has said accession talks will take between 12 and 24 months to be completed from the time they begin. Thursday's backing comes after Britain and the Netherlands indicated they would not block Iceland's accession talks bid, having received sufficient reassurances that the country of 320,000 people would meet its financial obligations. "The United Kingdom will not block the start of Iceland's accession negotiations," British Foreign Secretary William Hague told reporters in Luxembourg on Monday. "But we will want it to be clear as they start that process that Iceland is committed to resolving its financial and legal obligations, to meeting its financial and legal obligations. So that is clear," he said. Iceland was reluctant to join the EU for decades but applied for membership last year when the global financial crisis devastated its banking system. It hopes for rapid entry talks and to join by 2012 because it is better prepared than many other EU hopefuls and already belongs to the EU's single market and its Schengen borderless zone.
