By Dominic Hughes
BBC News, Brussels
**The European Commission is expected to recommend the opening of EU membership negotiations with Iceland shortly.**But crucial to any progress will be an unresolved dispute with the Netherlands and UK over the repayment of debts lost in Iceland’s bank collapse in 2008.
The UK and Dutch governments paid out 3.8bn euros (£3.3bn; $5.4bn) to savers who lost money when Iceland’s online bank Icesave went bust.
No deal has been reached yet on a new Icelandic repayment plan.
Almost a quarter of the Icelandic population signed a petition against a repayment plan, prompting the country’s president, Olaf Ragnar Grimsson, to veto it last month.
Without Dutch and British support Iceland has no chance of joining the EU.
So while Iceland is better placed than any other candidate country to become the EU’s 28th member, the Icesave issue will have to be sorted out first.