Reykjavik Redux: Iceland Reopens EU Debate

Reykjavik, Iceland

May 27, 2026 
EurActiv
By David Mac Dougall

(EurActiv) — With less than 100 days until Iceland votes on whether to restart EU membership talks, the island remains deeply divided, with both camps only now beginning to mobilise their campaigns ahead of the summer ballot.

The national referendum on joining the EU takes place on 29 August and the two intractable opposing political sides have yet to fully make their case.

On the “yes” side: a government coalition that sees a geopolitical imperative for EU membership and on the other side, the “no” campaign sees a loss of sovereignty, and worse, loss of control over Iceland’s agriculture and fishing industries.

The polls, like the country, are split. A recent survey in the Morgunblaðið daily newspaper found a narrow majority in favour of continuing EU accession talks, 52% to 48%; while a poll in the business weekly Viðskiptablaðið asking whether Iceland should join the EU found 54% against and 46% in favour.

“Public support for continuing the negotiations has actually gone down since the referendum was announced in March,” said Maximilian Conrad, a professor who teaches European integration and political theory at the University of Iceland.

“Voters want to know what is in the membership package, what’s in it for Iceland.”
Campaigning begins

The “no” campaign got off to a brisk start with a flurry of supportive columns in friendly newspapers. The “yes” campaign has been waiting to get recent municipal elections out of the way before cranking into action.

“It is not in our interests to be part of the EU,” Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, who was Iceland’s foreign minister from 2017 to 2021, told Euractiv.

His conservative Independence Party is not only staunchly against EU membership, but also against even discussing the prospect of joining.

“It’s no secret what it means to be a member of the EU,” he says, reeling off a well-rehearsed list of areas where his side of the campaign says Iceland would be worse-off. He argued that Iceland would lose significant legislative and executive powers under EU membership, with EU law and courts overriding national sovereignty.

According to the former minister, Iceland already enjoys most of the EU’s trade advantages through existing agreements, including a bilateral free trade deal with China and broader access via European Free Trade Association agreements such as with India.

Þórðarson highlights the issue of tariffs in particular, claiming that eighty percent of Iceland’s trade deals have “zero tariffs in Iceland” but says “only twenty or twenty-five percent of EU trade deals have zero tariffs.”

The biggest problem area for the “no” campaign centres around agriculture and fisheries.

“We are very strict when it comes to traditional Icelandic agriculture, and it means we can protect those few thousand jobs we have,” Þórðarson said.

“If we were part of the EU that would all be gone,” he said, arguing that EU trade policy is not designed for Icelandic trade policy and it “never will be”.
The ‘yes’ campaign

The “yes” campaign, led by Iceland’s Social Democrat prime minister Kristrún Frostadóttir and her three-party coalition government, also acknowledges that agriculture and fisheries are the most sensitive subjects for voters.


“We cannot escape the fact that Iceland has special circumstances, and we cannot be under the same rules as the rest of the EU for agriculture and import of fresh livestock,” said Dagbjört Hákonardóttir, an MP from the ruling Social Democrats who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee in Iceland’s Parliament.

“In some cases, derogations are needed, and in some cases the status quo allows for a vivid interpretation of the rules.”

Hákonardóttir pointed out that under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, there are special rules for Nordic countries which were brought in after Sweden and Finland joined in 1995.

The CAP rules are adjusted for Arctic regions to take into account short growing seasons and long harsh winters, allow ongoing state subsidies to support farmers, and are intended to counter population decline while maintaining security of supply for domestic food production.

The “yes” campaign argues Icelandic farmers would qualify for special Arctic exemptions under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, rather than follow the same rules as producers elsewhere in the bloc.

Fisheries, the “yes” campaign acknowledges, is another very sensitive red line area.

“The EU has a lot to learn from us. We have a huge fisheries zone which would de facto fall under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, but we must have the final say on how much fish we are going to be catching and so forth, not the EU,” Hákonardóttir said.
Previous accession talks

A “yes” vote in August would reopen EU accession negotiations suspended in 2013 after talks between Iceland and the bloc stalled under a previous Social Democrat government.


Hákonardóttir said any renewed process would be approached as “a fresh start” with a new negotiating strategy.

Despite the sharp divisions over EU membership, Iceland remains one of the world’s strongest democracies, and consistently scoring among the highest countries for rule of law and civil liberties.