Athough this has been extensively blogged about at A Tangled Web and elsewhere, TheEye decided to wait until the moment of truth to comment.

Farewell, then, Iceland. We are going to miss you. Okay, we won’t miss arguing about cod. Or about Rockall. Or your habit of creating new volcanic islands at random. Or any of your banks. Or Bjork. Or The Sugarcubes.

Okay, so we won’t really miss you at all when you cease to be an independent country.

For today is the day that Iceland officially applied to join the European Union, with its foreign minister targeting membership within three years.

“This is the day when I have the historic duty to hand in formally the Icelandic application to the E.U.,” Foreign Minister Oessur Skarphedinsson said at a presentation ceremony in Sweden, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was really enthusastic about the whole thing, saying the application would be dealt with “in the same way as the other membership bids.”

He added “Got any Bjork CD’s?”

According to Bildt, Iceland’s membership in the EU will “let diligently cooperate” with “the Arctic region which is extremely important regarding to ecological and sea routes matters.” So, give us your fish and don’t cause trouble.

The request has to be approved by the EU and after that Icelanders will vote on it in a referendum. Remember what one of those is, McDoom? It’s where you get to vote on stuff.

The key issue in any referendum is going to be the EU’s fisheries policy, long a difficult topic within the bloc and one of Iceland’s most important industries.

The Icelandic parliament, after a long and heated debate, concluded that joining the EU and adoption of the euro currency would help to restore the health of the economy after the devastating economic meltdown, which saw the top Icelandic banks collapse last year.

Strange that for every other country in the EU membership has been a sea-anchor on their economies and a source of high taxes…Iceland ranked 5th in the Index of Economic Freedom 2006 and 14th in 2008 with a flat tax system. The main personal income tax rate is a flat 22.75 percent and combined with municipal taxes the total tax rate is not more than 35.72%, and there are many deductions. The corporate tax rate is a flat 18 percent, one of the lowest in the world. Other taxes include a value-added tax and a net wealth tax. Employment regulations are relatively flexible.

Let’s see how long all that survives under the EU dictatorship.