Not in 2027, as planned, but sometime “in the coming months” Iceland will hold a referendum on resuming accession talks with the European Union. Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir said this during a press conference on Wednesday. According to international media US-fueled tensions in the Arctic are reason to bring forward the referendum.
Iceland applied for EU membership as early as 2009, but in 2013 the then government paused the talks. That had everything to do with the euro crisis. The current government had promised a referendum on resuming talks in 2027, but is now accelerating the process. A date is expected to be set sometime in the coming weeks.
Based on insiders wrote Politico earlier on Wednesday about bringing forward the referendum. This is said to have to do with import duties imposed by the United States and American threats to annex Greenland – sometimes confused with Iceland by President Donald Trump. Billy Long, nominated by Trump as ambassador to Iceland, once ‘joked’ that Iceland would become the “fifty-second state” of the US and that he would be its governor.
Trump’s argument for the annexation of Greenland, its strategic location in the Arctic, could also apply to Iceland. Iceland, like Denmark, which includes Greenland, is already a member of NATO. The country is also already a member of the Schengen Zone and the European Economic Area and has therefore already adopted many EU laws. If Icelanders vote in favor of resuming accession talks, the process could move relatively quickly.
