Iceland has voted against reopening EU accession negotiations on 29 August 2026. Kikka Sigurðardóttir, Leader of the Icelandic Greens Græningjar, explains what really drove the 52.8% referendum result: fishing rights, rural identity, and a simple lack of urgency. She also looks at what deepening ties with Brussels could still mean for Iceland, and how the country should position itself as the US grows less predictable and Arctic tensions rise.
Iceland held a referendum on whether to restart accession negotiations with the European Union. The result was 52.8% against and 47.2% in favour, despite a strong pro-European government and growing international uncertainty. What do you think were the main issues during the campaign and what has been driving the No vote?
The result was decided by three interlocking factors. First, fish and fish products account for around 40% of Iceland's exports. Under EU membership, Iceland would enter the Common Fisheries Policy, which sets national quotas at the Brussels level and, in principle, opens Icelandic waters to vessels from other Member States. According to a Gallup poll, nearly 90% of Icelandic fishing-sector companies opposed accession. The No campaign built its argument around this single point: that any framework requiring Iceland to negotiate rather than set its own catch limits was a loss of control the country could not afford. The government tried to defuse this by asking Brussels in advance for "full authority" over Iceland's fishing system. The assurances did not land. Second, sovereignty over natural resources. Iceland's political identity is built on winning the Cod Wars against Britain in the 1970s to establish exclusive control over its waters. For a large share of the Icelandic electorate, especially outside Reykjavík, the referendum was framed not as "do we join the EU" but as "do we hand back control of the resource we fought to keep." That framing is hard to defeat with technical reassurances. And third, it reflected our urban-rural divide. Reykjavík North supported accession at 57.5%. Rural constituencies rejected it, several by more than 60%. Fishing is disproportionately rural, and the geography of the vote closely tracked the geography of the industry.
Underneath these factors, there was no feeling of urgency. Iceland already sits inside the single market and Schengen through the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement. Its GDP per capita is around €84,000, among the highest in Europe. Voters largely did not experience the current arrangement as inadequate. As one analyst summarised after the vote: "There is no economic urgency for Iceland to join the European Union, and the public doesn't seem to think there is an urgency when it comes to security and defence either." Trump's threats to Greenland made the news, but did not, in the end, move enough voters to change the outcome.
No voters were not, in the main, opposed to the EU as an institution. They were opposed to trading unilateral control of Iceland's fisheries for benefits – deeper political integration, the euro, a seat at the Brussels table – that they do not currently feel the need for. Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir had committed to shelving the EU membership question for the remainder of her term (until 2028) if the vote went against negotiations, and she is now honouring that.
The referendum was framed at home as a technical question about accession negotiations – not as a symbol to be lifted by movements very far from mainstream Icelandic politics. But that is what it has become.
The EU membership being off the table for now, does it still make sense to deepen the relationship between Iceland and the EU, and if so, how?
Yes, and Kristrún's Frostadóttir government has already begun. The membership door is closed for now, but there are many other rooms in the same building. Each is either being actively negotiated or already in use. After the vote the Prime Minister stated that Iceland will "focus on strengthening its existing ties with the European Union through the EEA agreement, which it shares with Norway and Liechtenstein," noting that "people are happy with the EEA agreement." The EEA is not frozen. Its scope can be widened, and Iceland has room to opt into more of the EU's regulatory and cooperation frameworks than it currently does.
Then we have the Iceland-EU Security and Defence Partnership. Having been signed in March 2026, this is genuinely new ground. It covers hybrid-threat response, civil protection, secure communications, critical-infrastructure protection, and cyber-threat management. It sits alongside NATO – it does not replace anything – and it gives Iceland a formal defence channel to Brussels for the first time. Added to that is SAFE (Security Action for Europe), the EU's roughly €150 billion per year security-and-defence programme now being opened to non-Member partners including Iceland, the UK, Norway, and Canada. Iceland's access to this pool is a direct product of the defence-partnership talks.
The euro question remains unresolved. The government had planned to set up an expert panel on the pros and cons of joining the euro. That analytical work does not require EU membership to begin, and if Iceland's currency exposure becomes uncomfortable in the coming years – a real possibility given how small the krona is on international markets – the euro conversation is ready.
Added to this, I foresee an upgrade in political-level dialogue. EEA countries have "voice but no vote" in EU decision-making. Iceland can push – and, on some files, has been pushing – for stronger consultation rights, particularly on foreign-policy alignment and Arctic issues where Iceland's expertise matters to Brussels.
The honest way to describe the current strategy is that Iceland has said No to becoming an EU Member State while saying Yes, in practice, to becoming closer with the EU on almost every dimension short of full membership. That is a coherent position, not a contradiction, and it is the position the current government is now operating from.
The campaign took place at a time when the United States is less predictable, Russia remains an aggressor, and the Arctic is becoming more strategically important. How do you see Iceland’s place in this changing world, and what role should cooperation with the EU play in Iceland’s future foreign and security policy?
Iceland is a country of about 400,000 people with no army, sitting in the middle of what is becoming one of the most strategically contested spaces on earth. Its foreign policy has always run on a small set of external supports. The question now is which of those supports can still be trusted to carry weight. The three pressures are all real, and all push in the same direction.
Trump's public statements about annexing Greenland – Iceland's closest neighbour, and a fellow NATO ally – were not treated in Reykjavík as harmless bluster. They set a precedent: a US administration willing to entertain, in public, the acquisition of Arctic territory from an allied democracy. Iceland's entire security architecture since 1951 has been built on the assumption that the United States is a reliable protector. That assumption now carries a risk premium it did not carry five years ago.
The GIUK gap – the maritime corridor between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom – is the choke point Russian submarines transit to reach the Atlantic. Iceland sits on top of it. Increased Russian naval activity in the region is not abstract; it is the daily reality that NATO's Arctic Sentry mission (launched February 2026) is designed to monitor.
The Arctic is becoming more strategically important. Melting ice is opening shipping lanes, exposing resource deposits, and shortening the strategic distance between continents. Every serious military actor – the US, Russia, China, NATO collectively – is now investing there. Iceland's geography makes it central to any Atlantic-Arctic strategy.
The EU cannot replace NATO for Iceland for now – no European actor can substitute for the American security guarantee in the North Atlantic – and it is not trying to. What the EU can do is act as an insurance layer: a second, thickening channel of defence, intelligence, cyber, and civil-protection cooperation that does not depend on the political weather in Washington. For a small country whose primary protector has become less predictable, that second channel is not a luxury. It is prudence.
Iceland has, in this referendum, chosen to stay outside the EU as a Member State, and did so without knowing what an accession agreement would have offered Icelanders. But it has not chosen to stay outside the European project. The direction of travel – deeper EEA use, a signed defence partnership, SAFE access, tighter Nordic cooperation, a first defence policy – is unmistakable. The referendum settles the membership question for this parliamentary term. It does not settle Iceland's relationship with Europe, which is still being written.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue.