THE FIRST week of September is when European officialdom returns from a summer spent at the beach, rested and raring to take on the continent’s challenges. Alas, the mood of the rentrée has been marred by an unexpected snub from the mid-Atlantic. In a referendum on August 29th Icelanders voted narrowly not to reopen negotiations to join the European Union. Though the vote hinged largely on local concerns, it was an unwelcome back-to-work surprise for Brussels types.
For a club accustomed to discussing how quickly others might join, being told “no thanks” is discomfiting.
But all referendums are local. This time they made the same argument: the union’s rules would allow other countries’ vessels into Icelandic waters and impose caps on fishing that would hurt exports. The movement against joining was bolstered by a belief that Iceland can prosper on its own, and that existing arrangements with the EU—along with the country’s membership in NATO—are sufficient. It wasn’t just the fish. Only inside Reykjavik, the capital, did most voters back restarting negotiations to join the EU; everywhere else, there was a clear majority against. Farmers fretted about competition and loss of government subsidies. Employers and some unions stood against it, too. That turned out to be more convincing than the campaign in favour, which claimed that a tiny island nation needs formal membership in a wider union to thrive. The EU will no doubt play down the snub. It is already in the European Economic Area, a sort of outer tier of the EU, and forms part of Schengen, the bloc’s passport-free travel scheme. The renewed talks might have failed anyway. But this will be scant consolation for a union that has prided itself on its attractiveness to outsiders. Ten countries with a combined population of 150m have formally applied to join the union (though talks with Turkey, the largest, have been frozen for years). All of them are poor, most have dysfunctional politics and one (Ukraine) is at war. This weekend’s vote is a reminder that richer potential members of the EU, such as Switzerland and Norway, are in no rush to join. It is a point of pride in Brussels that while Mr Trump threatens his neighbours with takeovers, the EU has such appeal that neighbouring countries are clamouring to join. Someone forgot to tell the Icelanders.
Iceland’s fishing industry, which accounts for almost 40% of the country’s goods exports, led the charge against EU membership. Fishing interests had derailed Iceland’s previous plan to join the union in 2013, after the country had suffered a crippling financial crisis. Iceland has only 400,000 people—just 0.1% of the EU population, fewer than any current member. The referendum was merely to reopen the negotiations that were suspended in 2013, after a change of government.
