A national referendum held last Saturday resulted in Icelanders rejecting the idea of restarting the country’s accession negotiations to join the European Union. Bæjarins besta was the first to report on the result, which has raised questions about the status of Iceland’s application, originally submitted in 2009.
In the national vote, 52.8 percent of voters said no to reopening talks, while 47.2 percent were in favour, according to reporting from Fréttin. The referendum question specifically asked whether negotiations on Icelandic EU membership should begin anew.
Although the vote was a clear rejection of new discussions, it did not constitute a formal withdrawal of Iceland’s existing 2009 EU application. The European Commission spokesperson stated that this application “was never formally withdrawn and is therefore still in effect.” The referendum’s outcome was therefore not a binding withdrawal decision, as noted by DV and mbl.is.
Bæjarins besta commented that the result provided a clear answer rejecting renewed negotiations, and suggested it also implicitly addressed another, unspecified question the government had avoided posing. Some commentators, according to DV, said the ‘no’ side had significantly more funding during the campaign and accused both sides of engaging in fearmongering.
International media also weighed in, with one Norwegian outlet quoted in Fréttin as saying that Iceland’s decision to vote ‘no’ secures national control over fisheries and energy.
