Iceland Votes Today on Reopening Its Path to the EU
Icelanders are voting on whether to restart EU accession talks frozen in 2013, with the final poll putting No narrowly ahead at 51.6 per cent — too close to call, with over a fifth of voters having cast ballots early. Fishing remains the crux, with marine industries around 40 per cent of exports; the economic case for Yes rests on 8 per cent interest rates and prices 87 per cent above the EU average. Results are expected in the early hours of tomorrow.
The arithmetic of small-country referendums is brutal: some 250,000 voters will settle a question watched from Brussels to Washington, and the margin may be a fishing village or two. Iceland’s dilemma is the North Atlantic’s in miniature — a NATO founder with no army, squeezed between a resurgent Russia, an unpredictable America eyeing Greenland next door, and a European bloc offering shelter at the price of the fish that built the nation. Twenty-seven of thirty-five negotiating chapters were already open when talks froze, so a Yes could move fast by accession standards. A No settles nothing but postpones everything. Watch the coastal constituencies tonight — and Brussels’ fisheries language if Yes sneaks home.