Iceland, No wins with 52.8%: no mandate to reopen negotiations with the EU

The Icelandic referendum of Saturday closes with No at 52.8% and Yes at 47.2%. We wrote about it on August 26, on the eve of the vote; today the final results arrive, and they are the first certain data of this affair.

Turnout was 225,031 voters, equal to 82.5% of those eligible: a participation rate that makes it difficult to dismiss the outcome as a marginal margin, even if the gap between the two camps is just over five and a half points, according to the count reported by ANSA.

The territorial distribution is the most legible part of the result. Yes won only in the two constituencies of the capital — Reykjavík South with 54.49% and Reykjavík North with 57.51% — while in the remaining four constituencies No prevailed, as reported by Il Post. It is a divide between the urban area and the rest of the country that traces the island’s economic geography more than it traces that of the parties.

It is worth recalling what was at stake, because the headline of the vote has often been oversimplified. The question did not ask Icelanders whether to join the European Union: it only authorized the reopening of accession negotiations, with the understanding that any agreement would be submitted to a second referendum. The process had been abandoned in 2015, after the closure of 11 chapters. The No, therefore, does not close a door on accession: it denies the mandate to return to the table.

The theme that dominated the campaign was control of fishing, a sector that accounts for about 40% of Icelandic exports. A Gallup poll prior to the vote indicated that 90% of fishing-related businesses were opposed to accession. It is the number that best explains why Yes stopped at the two constituencies of the capital: outside Reykjavík the relative weight of the fishing sector in the local economy is higher, and the stakes of the negotiation — the management of quotas and waters — cease to be an abstract matter of sovereignty.

Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir read the result as a confirmation of the status quo, stating that in Iceland “people are very satisfied with the EEA agreement,” as reported by Euronews. The European Economic Area agreement is the framework within which the island participates in the internal market without being a member of the Union, and it is what remains in place after August 29.

At the European level, the relevant data is twofold. On one hand, enlargement to the north, which in recent years had been reopened in the debate alongside Finland and Sweden’s entry into NATO, loses its most immediate candidate: there is no Icelandic negotiation to restart, and there will not be one until a new political pronouncement intervenes. On the other hand, the margin — just over five points — and the 47.2% collected by Yes indicate that the issue remains divisive in a country where participation approached 83%.

In the immediate term nothing changes in relations between Reykjavík and Brussels: the EEA agreement and related arrangements remain in force, and the negotiating chapters closed in 2015 remain where they were.