When Iceland Said No to Brussels

For Iceland, the choice has never been between Europe and isolation. Iceland is a founding member of NATO, belongs to the European Free Trade Association, participates in the Schengen Area, and, since 1994, has participated in the European Economic Area. Through the EEA, Iceland is part of the Single Market, and participates in its four freedoms: the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.

Icelanders already live, study, work and establish businesses throughout the EEA under its free-movement regime. Much of the economic integration commonly associated with EU membership is therefore already part of everyday Icelandic life. However, the EEA is not the European Union. Crucially, it does not incorporate some of the areas in which Iceland has been most determined to retain national control. Iceland is outside the EU customs union and Common Commercial Policy. It retains its own currency and monetary policy. And two areas of enormous economic, cultural and political importance—agriculture and fisheries—remain outside the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy.

That is where the apparently simple promise of a “seat at the table” becomes considerably more complicated. Full membership would give Iceland a voice and vote in institutions in which it currently has neither. But it would also extend European integration into areas that Iceland deliberately controls outside the EEA today. The seat does not come free. Icelanders were offered a chair at the negotiating table. They looked at it. And decided they were perfectly comfortable standing.