The chances of Iceland entering negotiations to join the European Union vanished this Sunday. The vote count from the referendum held yesterday in that country not only gave victory to the ‘no’, but also revealed that the ‘yes’ received significantly less support in its ‘strongholds’, mainly located in the capital, Reykjavik. Early voting, which could reach 30% of the total, also seems to have supported the EU less than expected. In the end, the ‘no’ won over the ‘yes’ with a 52.5% to 47.5% of the votes, with one constituency still to be counted that also favored the ‘no’.
The victory of those opposed to negotiating with the EU is paradoxical, because the Social Democratic Alliance of Prime Minister Kristún Frostadóttir, who launched the referendum, is popular. If elections were held now, according to polls, it would gain seven points more votes than it did in the November 2024 elections that brought it to power.
However, her decision to bring forward the referendum on negotiations with the EU, initially planned for 2027, to this year has not worked. Frostadóttir announced the new date in January, right at the peak of the crisis over neighboring Greenland, which Donald Trump threatened to invade and annex to the United States.
The arguments of the social democrats and their government allies from the Liberal Reform Party have been mainly technocratic. According to Frostadóttir’s team, Iceland must consider a potential entry into the EU because the US, Russia, and China are disputing the Arctic as the ‘greenhouse effect’ melts the North Pole and opens it to navigation and exploitation of its natural resources. Added to this was the future entry into the euro to try to contain inflation and lower interest rates.
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The supporters of the ‘no’ have insisted that Iceland, with its barely 408,000 inhabitants, would have no influence in the EU or the euro. They have also used emotional arguments, such as invoking the country’s independence, which only achieved full sovereignty from Denmark at the end of the Second World War.
This is how the ‘yes’, which was clearly ahead in the polls in January, ended up tied with the ‘no’, until Thursday, in an unexpected move, the polling company Gallup put it behind.
Nothing better reflects the Icelandic national confusion about the EU than the attitude of the other party in government: the left-wing populist People’s Party. First, it voted in Parliament in favor of the referendum. Then, it campaigned for the ‘no’.
