Icelandic Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir has made Arctic security the closing argument of her campaign to reopen European Union accession talks, ahead of an August 29 referendum that pollsters say is too close to call.
Her government has spent the final week of campaigning on US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to take control of Greenland. Trump called the Danish territory Iceland on several occasions, a slip that unsettled a country of about 400,000 people with no armed forces of its own.
Frostadóttir told AFP the ballot committed Iceland to nothing. “This is an opportunity, it’s not a final decision,” she said, describing a Yes vote as risk-reducing.
Voters face a single question: Should negotiations on Iceland’s membership of the European Union start again. The result is advisory and any accession treaty would go to a second referendum before the country could join.
A Maskína poll for Vísir published on August 26 put the Yes side on 51.3 per cent and the No side on 48.7 per cent among those who had taken a position. The same pollster recorded a Yes lead of 6.2 points in June, and 8.5 per cent of respondents were still undecided.
Icelandic foreign minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, whose Reform Party was founded to pursue membership, said it would be “both naive and irresponsible” to ignore the moment. She has argued that smaller member states gained rather than lost influence by joining.
The No campaign has concentrated on fisheries and the currency rather than on Washington. Guðrún Hafsteinsdóttir, who leads the centre-right Independence Party and the largest opposition group, has warned that membership would put control of Icelandic waters at risk and end the króna.
Fishing accounted for about 8 per cent of Icelandic gross domestic product in 2024 and remains the most sensitive chapter in any negotiation. Opponents say the Common Fisheries Policy would move decisions on quotas and access to Brussels.
Former prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir has also said she sees no case for joining, citing close existing economic ties and high living standards.
Iceland applied for membership in 2009 after its banking sector collapsed and opened talks the following year. A centre-right government suspended the process in 2013 and Reykjavík told Brussels in 2015 that it no longer wished to be treated as a candidate.
The country remains inside the single market through the European Economic Area and belongs to the Schengen zone. Polling stations close at 10pm local time.
The Icelandic Government has said a No vote would end any further attempt to restart accession negotiations.
