Iceland's rejection of EU membership talks is a blow to Brussels

Full text

BRUSSELS — For years, Brussels has sold EU membership as a shield against an unpredictable world: safety, stability and strength in numbers.

With Russia’s war in Ukraine raging and Donald Trump upending the global order — and going so far as threatening to invade Greenland — the EU hoped it had been cast in a more appealing light, despite the challenges caused by the rise of the far right, crises on its doorstep, and trade disputes with the U.S. and China.

Iceland’s vote not to reopen membership talks has shown that’s not necessarily the case.

“At a time when the international security environment has become far more uncertain than it was a decade ago, many expected support for reopening accession negotiations to grow,” said Nicola Procaccini, co-chair of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament. “The fact that the Icelandic people nevertheless chose not to take even that first step should give Brussels pause.”

Reykjavik’s narrow rejection of restarting EU accession talks in a referendum on Saturday is hardly a death blow to the 450 million-strong bloc. With fewer than 400,000 people and a smaller GDP than Estonia, Iceland was never the prize that would make or break Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s European project.

But the result is still an uncomfortable reality check for a Brussels establishment that has spent the past four years betting that a hazardous world would make the EU more attractive — and had taken Iceland’s renewed interest as a flattering signal of its own relevance.

“A nation weighed what membership would add to what it already has,” center-right Finnish MEP Mika Aaltola said, “and answered: not enough.”

Vote of (no) confidence

Enlargement is about more than adding countries to the EU. It is also a branding exercise: a way for Brussels to show that its model of democracy, prosperity and predictability remains attractive in a world of hard power politics.

Every country that knocks on the EU’s door gives the bloc a chance to present itself as a desirable club, in contrast to Trump’s claims that the continent is “decaying.” Iceland was unusually useful in that regard: a wealthy democracy that paused its membership bid in 2015, but was coming back and asking to be let in.

In the run-up to Reykjavík’s referendum, the bloc’s enlargement chief, Marta Kos, overtly framed it as a vote of confidence in the EU. “It would confirm our growing attractiveness in a world that is rapidly changing,” she told POLITICO.

The result of the referendum, then, would appear to signal the opposite.

“Iceland was demotivating,” said an EU official who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “Even a frozen country doesn’t want to be a part of the EU.”

The response from the European Commission has, so far, been a disappointed shrug. A Commission spokesperson gave a clipped statement, saying it “takes note” of the result and would remain a “close partner” of Iceland.

But a diplomat from a candidate country was gloomier, calling the result a huge blow to the bloc’s enlargement ambitions and the EU’s image more generally. Far-right, Euroskeptic leaders — from Marine Le Pen to Nigel Farage — immediately seized on the referendum’s failure, that diplomat pointed out, making the case for enlargement that much harder.

Reykjavik’s return to the negotiating table could have added momentum to the candidacies of Moldova, Ukraine and Albania, all of which are looking to advance their own paths toward membership. And Montenegro, which has closed over half its accession chapters, was eager to join the bloc at the same time as Iceland to help get its bid ratified.

A second diplomat from a different candidate country was more optimistic about the consequences of Iceland’s negative vote, however. While their first reaction was disappointment, that diplomat said they expected Brussels would focus even more on getting the advanced candidate countries that are eager to join, especially Montenegro, over the line.

Security nothingburger

For Icelandic voters, the reasons for saying No boiled down to a few key issues: fishing rights, sovereignty, the economy, and the fact that Iceland is already inside the European Economic Area and Schengen Area, getting many of the benefits of being in the EU without having to bear the full cost of membership.

Yet the biggest draw was supposed to be security. With Trump looming over Greenland, and using trade to coerce allies and enemies alike, safety in numbers inside the bloc suddenly seemed like an appealing prospect for tiny, remote Iceland.

“We are living in a completely different world than just 10 years ago,” Icelandic Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, who hails from a pro-EU party, told POLITICO before the vote. Ahead of the referendum, a Commission official said Trump had done the bloc a favor.

Yet Saturday’s referendum shows that while the EU’s promise of solidarity remains compelling for poorer, post-communist states on the bloc’s eastern flank, such as Moldova, Montenegro and Ukraine, security alone is not enough to lure richer, already well-integrated countries like Iceland, but also Norway and Switzerland, into the club.

Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, Iceland’s longest-serving president and an opponent of EU membership, said the Trump fear factor was just not a convincing enough argument, given that Iceland is a founding member of NATO and has a long-standing bilateral security agreement with the U.S. “There’s no shred of evidence that President Trump’s administration has any intention whatsoever in weakening that agreement,” he argued.

“We spent 100 years in a struggle against the Danish king and the Danish authorities in order to gain full independence,” Grímsson added, arguing Icelanders were loath to “start sharing that sovereignty in one way or another.”

Gabriel Gavin and Max Griera contributed to this report.