EU enlargement was a priority issue for the Swedish Presidency. The goal has been to ensure continued progress in the enlargement process. se2009.eu has asked Iceland's and Croatia's accession negotiators about their impressions and experiences during the Swedish Presidency.

Iceland applied for membership of the EU during the Swedish Presidency. An agreement between Croatia and Slovenia was reached and their border dispute no longer blocks Croatia's accession process.

Ambassador Vladimir Drobnjak is head of Croatia's negotiation delegation. He describes the expectations that his country had of the Swedish Presidency.

"Croatia expected exactly that which has occurred – leadership and a breakthrough in moving our accession process towards a final phase. There is a great deal of evidence to support this – everything from a number of negotiation chapters that were closed during the Swedish Presidency to the decision to activate a working group to draft the Treaty of Accession in December."

Högni Kristjansson is Iceland's chief negotiator.

"Iceland's goal was to cooperate as closely as possible with the Swedish Presidency during the application phase. The common goal of Iceland and the Swedish Presidency has been, and continues to be, to enable formal negotiations between Iceland and the EU to begin in early 2010. Iceland's membership application has been treated in the same way as the other candidate countries. And the fact of the matter is that we haven't asked for anything else," he says.

Was it really a priority issue?
When asked if he could tell that enlargement was a priority issue during the Swedish Presidency, Mr Kristjansson says:

"Absolutely. Even if there was broad support for Iceland's application, it was still important that enlargement was a priority issue for the Swedish Presidency. Sweden played an active role in seeing that the application was processed and in moving the entire enlargement dossier forward."

Ambassador Drobjnak describes the Croatian impression:

"Every country holding the Presidency places enlargement high on the agenda at the start of their period, but later on, not all of them actually work with the issue. When it comes to Sweden, what was said at the beginning was actually what happened in the end."

Negotiation successes
Regarding each country's negotiation successes during the Swedish Presidency, it is clear that they are in different phases of the negotiation process. For Iceland, the current Presidency is more of a starting point for gathering sufficient strength and support to reach substantial negotiations, according to Mr Kristjansson. Regarding Croatia's negotiations, Ambassador Drobnjak says:
"We made considerable progress during the Swedish Presidency. Sweden played a supportive role in the bilateral relations between Croatia and Slovenia, which resulted in the signing of the arbitration agreement. So far, we have opened six and provisionally closed eight chapters, but we hope to be able to increase these figures before the end of the Presidency."