Iceland votes on restarting EU accession talks this month

On 29 August, Iceland's 400,000 eligible voters will answer a single question: "Should Iceland reopen accession negotiations with the European Union?" The referendum, called by Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir's government, marks the first time the electorate has been consulted directly on the EU question since the financial crisis drove the country to apply in 2009.

From application to pause and back again

Iceland submitted its membership application in July 2009, months after the collapse of its three largest banks. Formal negotiations began in 2010 and proceeded at unusual speed: 27 of the 35 acquis chapters were opened and 11 provisionally closed before a centre-right coalition took office in 2013 and froze the process. Two years later the government declared Iceland "should not be regarded as a candidate country", though the application was never formally withdrawn. The chapters that were closed cover areas such as science and research, education and culture, and consumer protection; the most contentious, Chapter 13 on fisheries, was never opened and no Icelandic negotiating position was ever submitted.

A European Commission spokesperson told reporters that if Reykjavík signals a desire to resume, the EU and its 27 member states would "quickly determine how best to take the process forward, building on the work already done." The same official noted that "no two accession processes are identical" and each candidate is assessed on its own merits. Eirikur Bergmann, professor of politics at Bifröst University, describes the coming vote as a "pre-referendum" because a yes merely restarts talks; any eventual accession treaty would face a second, binding referendum.

Already three quarters inside the bloc

Few candidate countries arrive at the negotiating table as integrated as Iceland. The country is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and has participated in the European Economic Area (EEA) since 1994, adopting the vast majority of single-market legislation without a vote. It joined the Schengen Area in 2001, removing internal border controls with 26 European states. Bergmann estimates Iceland is "at least three quarters inside the realms" of the EU and "already almost completely aligned with the EU on most of the issues that have been difficult for the accession of other countries." The practical distance to membership is therefore shorter than for any recent applicant, provided the political will holds.

Fisheries: identity, not just economics

The single largest domestic obstacle remains fisheries. Iceland's exclusive economic zone covers 758,000 square kilometres and the sector accounts for roughly 40 percent of export earnings. Under the EU's Common Fisheries Policy, regulatory authority and international representation would shift to Brussels, a transfer no Icelandic politician has yet been willing to endorse. "The political reality in Iceland is that no politician could ever advocate for an accession treaty that will not both practically and formally guarantee Iceland's control over its fishing grounds," Bergmann says. Chapter 13 was never opened in the previous round; Iceland never submitted a position.

Costas Kadis, the European Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans, has signalled there is room to discuss "flexibility and tailored arrangements" for Iceland. Such language matters: in Brussels fisheries is treated as a technical allocation problem; in Reykjavík it is a question of sovereignty and cultural survival. "What people outside of Iceland often do not get is how the political identity in Iceland plays out in domestic politics," Bergmann adds. "Oftentimes there hasn't been an understanding of this in Brussels, for example, around the fishing policies, where people think it's a practical issue, when it's a much bigger question and much more symbolic."

Greenland, Trump and the security calculus

Geopolitics has given the referendum urgency. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory. At the World Economic Forum in Davos that month he referred to Greenland as "Iceland", a confusion Frostadóttir acknowledged concerned her. "Obviously, all of this Greenland matter concerns people, right? It's a huge problem. The fact that we have leaders in the free world talking like this is an issue. It's a massive issue, and I know Icelanders are very concerned about it," she said in July.

Iceland is a NATO member with a bilateral defence agreement with the United States, but it has no standing armed forces of its own. "Iceland has never felt that it needed to set up its own defences," Bergmann notes. "But now Iceland finds itself in a completely different situation where the US is not as reliable a partner as it once was." That perception pushes the country toward Europe and raises the question of whether the EU or individual European states might become Iceland's security guarantors. The Arctic dimension, mentioned by Frostadóttir when she said the EU is "looking strategically around" and needs "increased flexibility for Europe to stay more modern", adds a strategic layer to what was once a purely economic calculation.

What the EU has signalled

In June the European Council opened the first negotiating clusters for Ukraine and Moldova, demonstrating a renewed appetite for enlargement after years of stagnation. Iceland's previous progress, 27 chapters opened, 11 provisionally closed, means the technical groundwork is largely complete. The Commission has indicated it would "quickly determine how best to take the process forward" and that "a substantial amount of work was already completed during the earlier negotiations, and that would naturally be taken into account." That does not guarantee speed: each remaining chapter must be revisited, new ones opened, and unanimous agreement of all 27 member states secured at each stage.

Two referendums, one uncertain outcome

If a majority votes yes on 29 August, the government will formally notify the EU of its intention to resume negotiations. The talks themselves could take years; the previous round lasted three years before being halted. Any resulting accession treaty would then be put to a second referendum. A no vote would leave the application dormant but would not sever Iceland's deep institutional ties, EEA, EFTA, Schengen and NATO membership would continue unchanged. Polling has fluctuated; the fisheries question, the security argument and the memory of the 2008 crash all pull in different directions. What is certain is that the result will be read in Brussels, Washington and across the Arctic as a measure of how a small, highly integrated non-member calculates its place in a shifting European order.