"That's why it's 50/50"

On August 29, Icelanders will vote in the country’s fourth national postwar referendum and, amazingly, its first on the European question.

The polling is neck and neck over whether this sparsely populated but strategically important island should restart the negotiations it suspended 13 years ago over whether Iceland should join the EU.

This decision by the country’s 230,000 registered voters will have ramifications well beyond the Arctic. For 60 years, the European communities (now the union) have been a unique magnet for countries in the old continent. Starting with six member states, the EU now has 27 and another six in active accession negotiations. But these take time. A long time. And, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and US threats to annex Greenland and withdraw security guarantees for its oldest allies, Europe needs new military architecture and fast-track integration.

Could Iceland model a version of this? Although it’s outside the EU, Iceland has been a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Europe’s 30-nation single market, for 32 years and of the Schengen free-movement area for 25. This referendum is about extras only - extra benefits and extra annoyances. Icelanders are being asked whether their government should start negotiating for representation in the union’s institutions, membership of the EU’s agricultural and fisheries policies, and the euro.

“That’s why it’s 50/50,” political scientist Vilborg Ása Guðjónsdóttir tells the Twenty-Four Two podcast. “I mean, there’s no real urgent reason to join as things stands. For me personally, I think the strongest reason would be to be in the midst of accession talks while we see how things develop globally in the next two or three years with the US: who’s going to take over from Trump etc. I think that’s the strongest reason: being on a team that’s going to be there for you when things go insane, which they have been doing … I know people in Greenland, quite a few and personally, and this was an absolute … and, to a point, still is an absolute nightmare. So I feel like we have to. It’s only responsible for us to take that into the equation”.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted today by Tim G. Jones, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.