Post Segments
On 29 August 2026, Icelanders voted by 52.8 per cent to 47.2 per cent against resuming accession talks with the European Union, on a turnout of 82.5 per cent. This brings to an end an on-off political saga that has been ongoing for the best part of two decades.
Iceland’s EU membership application was submitted in 2009 following the Icelandic bank collapse, by a coalition of the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement. The Social Democrats wanted membership; the Left-Greens opposed it but accepted the membership application as the price of office. The decision to submit the application was passed by a parliamentary majority of five, while a motion to put the question to the people in a referendum first was defeated by just two votes.
The membership application was shelved in 2013, after the economy had recovered and a new centre-right government had taken office. It was formally withdrawn in 2015.
The issue was revived again following Iceland’s 2024 parliamentary election, in which Viðreisn – a pro-EU party founded in 2016 by Independence Party members who had left over their leadership’s refusal to hold a promised referendum on accession – entered a coalition government. The coalition was itself divided on the matter of EU membership: the Social Democratic Alliance and Viðreisn supported resuming accession talks with the EU, while their coalition partner, the People’s Party, opposed membership. Nevertheless, the coalition agreement committed the government to holding a referendum on whether to reopen the EU accession negotiations.
The question put to voters was thus not whether Iceland should join the EU, but whether it should resume accession negotiations. In the event that negotiations with the EU were pursued and successfully concluded, joining would have been subject to a separate referendum.
What Iceland Already Had – and What Was at Stake
The choice was not between isolation and Europe. Iceland has been a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) since 1994, alongside Norway and Liechtenstein. This means Iceland is already part of the Single Market: membership of the EU would not change its access.
But by remaining outside the EU, Iceland retained national sovereignty over four key sectors: fisheries, agriculture, international trade, and monetary affairs. Iceland sets its own fishing quotas, runs its own agricultural policy, signs its own trade agreements, and keeps its own currency and independent monetary policy.
Those four sectors were what accession would have handed over to the EU. By leaving the EEA and entering the EU, Iceland would have had to adopt the Union’s legal framework, the acquis communautaire, and transfer control of fisheries, agriculture, international trade and monetary policy to Brussels. Of particular concern were the country’s sustainable and profitable fisheries, and the ability to make free trade agreements with countries such as China, India, the United States and Brazil.
Who Voted Which Way
The Yes vote was concentrated in the capital. Reykjavík North voted 57.5 per cent Yes and Reykjavík South 54.5 per cent. In contrast, the Northwest, Northeast and South constituencies each voted No by margins of around 60 to 63 per cent. The divide follows the distribution of fishing and agriculture outside the capital, and the concentration of professional and public-sector employment within it. The working classes are found in both Reykjavík and the countryside, but the talking classes live almost exclusively in Reykjavík.
The fishing issue in particular resonated deeply with Icelanders. Fishing and marine industries account for approximately 15 per cent of Icelandic GDP through direct and indirect contributions, and about 40 per cent of export revenue. Iceland’s long, hard fight for sovereignty over its fishing waters in the Cod Wars of 1958–76 still looms large in the popular consciousness. It was therefore no surprise that the fishing industry itself was close to unanimous for ‘No’: a Gallup poll conducted shortly before the referendum found that 90% of Icelandic companies linked to the fishing sector opposed EU membership.
A second pattern, surprising to many observers, was that the youngest voters also leaned towards No. A poll conducted by Icelandic polling organisation Maskína the day before the vote showed that support for Yes was lowest among the youngest voters (44 per cent) and the oldest (46 per cent among the over-seventies), and highest in the middle of the age range, at around 56 per cent among those in their forties and fifties. While the exact reasons why the youngest cohort of voters were the most sceptical of EU negotiations needs research, anecdotally I would submit it is related to the fact that there has been a revival of patriotism among young people in recent years. They take pride in their country and want to seize the opportunities she offers.
An unconvincing ‘Yes’ campaign
The Yes campaign relied upon tactics that will be familiar to British readers as reminiscent of the Remain campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum. Rather than making a positive case for EU membership in its own right, the Icelandic Yes campaign relied on two main arguments, both of which fell far short of Euro-enthusiasm.
Throughout the referendum campaign, the Yes camp relied mostly on one slogan: Já til að sjá. It is difficult to translate into English, but it is a concise way of saying Vote yes to find out what the EU would offer Iceland in negotiations. Who, they asked, could be against that?
The answer was anyone who had read the European Commission’s requirements for applicant countries. EU accession talks are not negotiations in the ordinary sense, in which each side pursues its own goals and the two seek an outcome that satisfies both. They are a process of adopting the Union’s legal framework, the acquis communautaire. While there is scope for negotiating temporary exemptions to ease adjustment, ultimately Iceland would be required to transfer control of fisheries, agriculture, trade, and monetary policy to Brussels. No negotiations were necessary to know this, and the idea that ‘Who knows, maybe we’ll get some concessions in negotiations,’ seemed to be the Yes campaign admitting that EU membership was not such a great deal after all.
The second Yes campaign tactic was to promise a much higher standard of living if Iceland joined the EU than the one it already enjoyed. This transactional argument focused on what Iceland could get out of EU membership rather than making the positive case for integration. As British readers will know, the focus on the transactional economic argument is now widely regarded as a key error of the Remain campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Yet Iceland‘s Yes campaigners decided to pursue the same tactic.
Moreover, the idea that EU membership could somehow boost living standards was unconvincing in a country which is already in the Single Market, and more prosperous than most EU member states. Iceland has one of the most equal income distributions in Europe and the lowest at-risk-of-poverty rate in Europe, 9 per cent in 2023 against an EU average of 16.2 per cent. Where exactly was the extra prosperity supposed to come from?
The obligations entailed by EU membership suggested the opposite: financial costs – from surrendering control of the economically important fishing industry to the Common Fisheries Policy, to fiscal transfers to poorer member states. A prosperous Iceland would have contributed considerably more to the Union than it received. The Icelanders were not amused when the magazine Politico cited an unnamed EU official who suggested it would suit the EU if Iceland and Montenegro joined at the same time, since Iceland’s wealth would make it a net contributor to the EU budget and effectively pay for the membership of Montenegro, which would be among the poorest members of the bloc.
And these costs only look set to increase in the future given that the EU’s prospects seem less than bright. The EU faces significant financial challenges: from unfunded pension liabilities (whereas the Icelandic pension system is one of the strongest in the world), to persistent government deficits in many member states, not to mention the future costs of enlargement to the current group of candidate countries, most of them considerably poorer than the existing EU27.
Between them, the Yes campaign’s two arguments left a void where the case for EU membership should have been. One asked Icelanders to postpone the question; the other reduced it to (highly unconvincing) economic calculation. Neither argument told Icelanders why EU membership was something positive and desirable.
Conclusion
The referendum closes a question that has been open since 2009. Iceland applied for EU membership in the wreckage of the bank collapse, suspended talks in 2013, and formally withdrew as a candidate in 2015. At no stage over the course of all those years was the public asked what should happen. Seventeen years on, they finally were, and 82.5 per cent of them turned out to answer.
Iceland already had the Single Market. All membership could offer was the surrender of fisheries, agriculture, trade policy and the currency, while all the Yes campaign could offer was a slogan that deferred the question, and a promise of prosperity out of thin air. The surprise is less that Yes lost than that it came within six points.
Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson is Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland and academic director of the Icelandic Research Centre for Innovation and Economic Growth (RNH). He campaigned for a No vote in the referendum.
