Microstates and the European Union

There are a number of microstates in Europe. While there is no clear consensus on which political units qualify as "microstates", most scholars view Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican City as examples of such states. At the same time, some academics dispute even qualifying Vatican as a state arguing that it does not meet the "traditional criteria of statehood" and that the "special status of the Vatican City is probably best regarded as a means of ensuring that the Pope can freely exercise his spiritual functions, and in this respect is loosely analogous to that of the headquarters of international organisations." According to the qualitative definition of microstates suggested by Dumienski (2014), microstates can also be viewed as "modern protected states, i.e. sovereign states that have been able to unilaterally depute certain attributes of sovereignty to larger powers in exchange for benign protection of their political and economic viability against their geographic or demographic constraints." And indeed, all of the European microstates are sovereign states that function in a close (and voluntary) association with their respective larger neighbour. Currently, all of the European microstates have special relations with the European Union.

Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican City remain outside the Union, some because of the cost of membership as the EU has not been designed with microstates in mind. Andorra is, by population, the largest of the 5 microstates with 78,115 according to a census taken in 2011. Two other small countries, Luxembourg and Malta, are full members of the European Union and both inhabited by populations over 400,000. Iceland is considered a microstate by some, because of its small population of 320,060 per April 2012. It is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), and is recognized as an official candidate for accession to the Union, though the negotiations have been suspended. If Iceland accedes to become an EU member state, it would enter as the smallest EU state measured by population, although twelfth largest by geographical size.

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