Even as the E.U. struggled to
come up with foreign policies on Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran in March, 2026, the
union must have been cogent enough then for the Icelandic government to set a
date at the end of the summer to have a referendum on whether to seek statehood.
The term for this is accession, not merger, for an empire-scale
union such as the U.S. or E.U. contains semi-sovereign states rather than co-scale
and co-equal “partners.” By implication, to liken a state in one such union to
another entire union is to make a category mistake that can be thought of in
historical terms as making the claim that a kingdom is equivalent to an empire
(of kingdoms). Both the E.U. and U.S. are federations composed of early-modern
scale kingdoms and republics.[1]
This is not so in the cases of Mexico and Canada. In fact, the U.S. has an open
invitation for Canada’s accession (rather than merger).[2]
People who presume that it was arrogant for the U.S. founders to invite Canada
to accede as a state forget that the U.S. was formed by sovereign countries
that became semi-sovereign states.
As the E.U. expands, it too
draws on sovereign countries to become states through the process of accession
(rather than merger). The planned referendum in Iceland was not on a merger of
two countries. Iceland had submitted to the European Commission, the E.U.’s
executive branch, an application for accession in 2009, but then unilaterally
halted the process in 2015 even though 11 of the 33 “chapters” had been completed.
As a sovereign nation, Iceland could indeed unilaterally stop the process, and
when the Icelandic government announced the date for the upcoming referendum,
the Commission could at most welcome the announcement. In doing so, a spokesman
for the Commission said, “Iceland is a close and valued partner of the E.U. . .
. Our cooperation is already strong and wide-ranging and we look forward to
continuing and further strengthening our close cooperation with the Icelandic
authorities.”[3]
The word partner connotes distance as in the sense that Iceland
is a sovereign country rather than an E.U. state. The word is problematic,
however, in that it implies an equivalency. Even just in Iceland having
submitted an application, a lack of equivalency is inherent to the
relationship. Moreover, accession itself lacks equivalency because
Iceland could become a state in the E.U., and no state is an equal partner with
the union in which the state is a part, for a part and a whole cannot be
equivalent.
The same held in the case of
the U.S., which was formed first as a military alliance and then as a
confederation of sovereign countries, and only on March 4, 1789 as a modern
(i.e., dual sovereignty) federation of semi-sovereign states and semi-sovereign
federal governmental institutions. In other words, the Articles of Confederation,
which was ratified in 1781, was for a union of sovereign countries. Therefore,
just as the U.S. was formed in 1776 (and continuing under the Articles) by sovereign
countries, so too was the E.U. formed by sovereign countries. In both cases,
sovereign countries, such as Iceland in 2026, because semi-sovereign states and
thus parts of political unions. Accession itself is a distinctly political process.
