Iceland goes to the polls on Saturday for a referendum on whether to resume talks on joining the European Union. Its application for membership, initially made in 2009, has been on hold since a change of government in 2013. Negotiations were suspended indefinitely, although it appears the application was never formally withdrawn; subsequent governments failed to reach agreement on the issue, and it gradually faded from the headlines.
Nor was Iceland alone on that score. The 2010s were not good times for the EU: no new members were admitted after Croatia in 2013, and one member, the United Kingdom, departed after a referendum in 2016. Predictions that others might follow suit were not borne out, but Switzerland withdrew its long-dormant application in 2016, and talks with Turkey were put on ice around the same time. Negotiations continued with countries in the western Balkans, but at an agonisingly slow pace.
Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the world changed. You can see it just by looking at Wikipedia’s table of Icelandic opinion polls: up to that point, polls mostly showed substantial majorities against membership, then suddenly they swung around. Collective security in Europe became a more urgent priority. It’s the same process that led Sweden and Finland to join NATO and led Denmark to opt in to the EU’s security and defence policy.
The return of Donald Trump provided a further boost to the idea of European solidarity. At the end of 2024 an early election produced another change of government in Iceland, bringing Social Democrat leader Kristrún Frostadóttir to power at the head of a three-party coalition. Only two of the three parties are actually pro-EU, but they agreed to hold a referendum on reopening negotiations. The EU has responded positively, but how long a “yes” vote might take to bear fruit is far from clear.
That result is no foregone conclusion. Polls have generally shown “yes” to be ahead, but only by narrow margins; the opposition parties are all supporting a “no” vote, and there’s often a tendency for undecided voters to swing to “no” at the last minute. And the issues that have held Iceland back in the past are all still there, although the biggest of them, fisheries, has become more tractable now that Britain is no longer in the EU.
Although Iceland is only a small country by population (smaller than any current EU member), it is wealthy as well as strategically significant and its accession would be a big boost to the union. It is also full of Nordic Christians; there is no occasion for the subtle – sometimes not so subtle – racism that keeps out Slavs and Muslims. But negotiations if they happen will still be subject to the EU’s interminable bureaucracy, and the government has promised that any agreement to join will be put to another referendum for approval.
There’s no doubt that events of the last few years have underscored the importance of strengthening the EU, whether by reforming its institutions or expanding its membership (“broadening vs deepening”, in the terms of the old debate). The advent of a more pro-EU leader in Britain is just one indicator. A “no” vote on Saturday would not halt that momentum, but it would be a setback that the democratic world could do without.
The World is Not Enough 