Iceland’s Proposed EU Referendum Is a Fraud

Just over a year ago, Icelanders elected a large majority of parliamentarians based on opposition to Iceland’s European Union membership. A total of 52 MPs from five political parties were opposed to EU membership. Only 11 MPs from the Reform party (Viðreisn) were in favor, though they kept quiet about it leading up to the elections and avoided making it a flagship policy. Yet, when it came to forming a government cabinet, Reform demanded that a national referendum be held on reviving the EU application, which had been withdrawn by the previous left-wing government under Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir in 2012. This is not procedural housekeeping; it is a calculated inversion of democratic order.

The standard, universal EU accession roadmap is unambiguous and well-established across applicants. A committed parliamentary majority first endorses candidacy. Only then does a formal application follow, triggering years—often a decade—of chapter-by-chapter negotiations on the acquis communautaire, the EU’s sprawling legal corpus. The applicant adapts unilaterally: laws harmonized, institutions reformed, economies realigned. Only after this grueling adaptation process, with an accession treaty in hand, does a national referendum typically confer popular ratification—legitimizing what has already become a parliamentary and technocratic fait accompli.

Examples abound: Croatia’s 2012 accession followed a decade of parliamentary-backed reforms and negotiations before its confirmatory referendum. Even Norway’s two failed referendums (1972 and 1994) came after parliamentary majorities had pushed the applications forward. In Iceland’s case, however, the sequence is reversed. No pro-EU majority exists in the Alþingi (parliament), quite the opposite; yet the government seeks to leapfrog parliament by soliciting public opinion on merely “resuming talks.” If the vote favors talks—a low bar, since dialogue is rarely opposed in principle—it will be spun as a green light for deeper integration, sidelining the legislature that voters actually elected to decide such matters.

Icelandic voters did not elect a majority of EU supporters to parliament, but rather a decisive majority against EU membership. The planned referendum—bypassing the outcome of parliamentary elections and holding a sham referendum on whether to resume talks—is a distortion of democracy. It is fraud—both against parliament and the nation.

But this maneuver isn’t novel. Fraud has been intertwined with the quarter-century-long effort by EU supporters to deceive people into supporting EU membership. In the fall of 2002, the then-leadership of the Social Democrat Alliance (Samfylkingin) posed a deliberately fuzzy question to party members to gain a mandate for a Brussels expedition: “Should it be the policy of the Social Democrat Alliance that Icelanders define their negotiation objectives, open talks on membership with the European Union, and that any possible agreement then be submitted to the nation for approval or rejection?”

Why were party members not simply asked whether they wanted Iceland to apply for EU membership? That would have been honest and straightforward. But EU supporters are neither honest nor straightforward. “Talks” and “defining objectives” sound innocuous, even virtuous—who opposes “talks”? A ‘no’ answer would appear obstructionist. A positive response was then interpreted as a mandate to pursue application. The tactic worked: after the 2008 banking collapse propelled the Social Democrats into power, vague “objectives” morphed swiftly into a full EU application on July 16, 2009.

Reform is playing the same game that the Social Democrat Alliance played a quarter century ago. The nation will be asked whether it is at all opposed to talks. If a majority say “we’re in favor of talks,” it will immediately be interpreted as “yes,” as support for EU membership. The nation is asked about talks, but then it will be pretended that membership has been approved.

The deception and trickery had consequences. When the Social Democrat Alliance was brought to power in the spring of 2009, there was no more talk of “defining negotiation objectives”—instead, an application was submitted on July 16, 2009. (The date is ominous in Icelandic history: on July 16, 1627, 300 North African pirates, in what is called Tyrkjaránið—the Turkish Raid—raided the Westman Islands.)

Opposition to the EU in Iceland grew when people realized that the so-called talks were an adaptation process into the European Union. As elections approached in the spring of 2013, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir’s administration withdrew the EU application from 2009. The left-wing government did not dare make EU membership an election issue in the parliamentary elections.

Security and defense issues, however, were not on the agenda in the EU application of Sigurðardóttir’s administration. Now, geopolitically, the timing could not be worse. The 2009–2013 bid assumed seamless NATO transatlantic unity, with EU-Europe as America’s reliable partner. That era has ended. Arctic rivalries have intensified: President Trump’s persistent interest in Greenland—deemed “unacceptable” by Prime Minister Frostadóttir—has thrust the North Atlantic into great-power focus. Her own statements underscore the fracture: she voiced full solidarity with Denmark and Greenland against U.S. pressures, and her administration advances EU alignment that could invite Brussels to fill perceived voids in the region. 

The United States no longer views EU-Europe as its outpost in the east. The new great-power defense line runs across the North Atlantic, where three islands, Greenland, Iceland, and Britain, anchor a strategic arc, commanding sea lanes, minerals, and defense postures.

Icelanders have defended their independence fiercely—from Danish rule through the Cod Wars’ assertion of fishing sovereignty against the British navy. To cede that hard-won autonomy via equivocal referendums, coalition quid pro quos, and procedural misdirection is not enlightenment; it is abdication. This vote masquerades as democratic consultation but functions as a bypass of the anti-EU mandate voters entrusted to the Alþingi—a perilous gamble that could entangle Iceland in great-power maneuvering at precisely the moment neutrality and caution are paramount.

Iceland’s approach to the EU, under the leadership of Frostadóttir’s administration, undermines the gains the United States achieved in the Greenland dispute. Authorities in Washington will see it as the EU trying to compensate for the defeat in Greenland by taking a position in Iceland. It bodes ill for Iceland to become a bone of contention in great-power politics.

Iceland must champion a foreign policy of prudence, self-determination, and institutional fidelity—not one that hazards national sovereignty for illusory European integration. Our historic resilience demands we proudly and defiantly reject this deceptive course and declare, with unwavering resolve: Iceland’s future will be charted by Icelanders, in sovereign freedom, far from Brussels’ lengthening shadow.