Iceland Votes Against Reopening EU Accession Talks
A Settled Answer, Given On A Turnout Most Democracies No Longer See
Iceland was asked whether to resume accession negotiations and said no by 12,701 votes, with 82.52 per cent of the electorate taking part. There is nothing provisional about a number like that.
The question on the ballot of 29 August was one sentence long: should Iceland resume accession negotiations with the European Union? A hundred and eighteen thousand and forty voters said no. A hundred and five thousand three hundred and thirty-nine said yes. The margin is 12,701, the No share is 52.84 per cent, and 82.52 per cent of the electorate turned out to say it — a participation figure most European democracies no longer reach at general elections, let alone on a single question about treaties.
What was being defended is not mysterious and was never hidden. It is the fishing grounds and the farms: the right to decide, in Reykjavík, who may take what out of Icelandic waters and on what terms. A country of this size that hands those decisions to a common policy administered elsewhere has handed away the part of its economy it actually controls. The campaign for a Yes never produced a written guarantee on the point, because there was none to produce.
An advisory question answered by four voters in five is not a mood to be waited out. It is the electorate doing the one thing it is occasionally asked to do.
Nor was there much on offer in exchange. Iceland already sits inside the single market through the European Economic Area, and already inside Schengen. The market access that accession is sold on is access the country has had for three decades. What membership would have added is the common fisheries and agricultural regimes, a seat at a table where a nation of 400,000 is outvoted as a matter of arithmetic, and the loss of the trade policy it now runs itself.
The result is therefore a setback in Brussels rather than a wobble in Reykjavík. A wealthy, stable European democracy already half-integrated by treaty looked at the remaining half and declined it, in the open, on a turnout nobody can dismiss. Reading that as a communications failure to be corrected next time is the same misreading the campaign made. The answer was given; the courtesy owed to it is to believe it.
The question on the ballot of 29 August was one sentence long: should Iceland resume accession negotiations with the European Union? A hundred and eighteen thousand and forty voters said no. A hundred and five thousand three hundred and thirty-nine said yes. The margin is 12,701, the No share is 52.84 per cent, and 82.52 per cent of the electorate turned out to say it — a participation figure most European democracies no longer reach at general elections, let alone on a single question about treaties.
Take the turnout seriously before anything else, because it is what disposes of the readings that would otherwise be available. A narrow result on a thin turnout can fairly be called a mood: a fraction of the country, mobilised by whoever was angriest that month, and reversible by whoever is angriest next. Four voters in five is not that. It is the electorate, in full, answering a question it was asked. Whatever one thinks of the answer, the one thing it cannot be called is unrepresentative.
What was being defended is not mysterious and was never hidden. It is the fishing grounds and the farms: the right to decide, in Reykjavík, who may take what out of Icelandic waters and on what terms. A country of this size that hands those decisions to a common policy administered elsewhere has handed away the part of its economy it actually controls. The campaign for a Yes never produced a written guarantee on the point, because there was none to produce — the Common Fisheries Policy admits derogations at the margin, not carve-outs for a member state's entire maritime economy.
An advisory question answered by four voters in five is not a mood to be waited out. It is the electorate doing the one thing it is occasionally asked to do.
Nor was there much on offer in exchange, and this is the part of the argument the Yes campaign never found an answer to. Iceland already sits inside the single market through the European Economic Area, and already inside Schengen. The market access that accession is sold on is access the country has had for three decades. Goods move, people move, services move, and the standards Iceland applies are largely the Union's already. What membership would have added is the common fisheries and agricultural regimes, a seat at a table where a nation of 400,000 is outvoted as a matter of arithmetic, and the loss of the trade policy it now runs itself.
The counter-argument is that a rule-taker without a vote is worse off than a member with a small one, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a dismissal. It is true that Iceland adopts single-market rules it does not write. But the comparison is not between influence and none; it is between adopting rules in the areas the EEA covers while keeping fisheries, agriculture and external trade, and adopting rules everywhere while holding a vote weighted at a fraction of one per cent. A vote that cannot change an outcome is not obviously worth the sectors that would be traded for it.
The result is therefore a setback in Brussels rather than a wobble in Reykjavík. A wealthy, stable European democracy already half-integrated by treaty looked at the remaining half and declined it, in the open, on a turnout nobody can dismiss. Reading that as a communications failure to be corrected next time is the same misreading the campaign made — and it is a misreading with a history, since the Union has now been told the same thing by referendum in enough member and candidate states that treating each one as a local accident requires more effort than believing them. The answer was given; the courtesy owed to it is to believe it.
