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In a referendum on 29 August 2026, Icelanders voted 53 to 47 per cent against resuming accession talks with the European Union, which had been halted in 2013. One of the most entertaining commentaries on this appeared in the podcast Econoclasts, hosted by economist Yanis Varoufakis and journalist Wolfgang Munchau. Varoufakis, a former Finance Minister of Greece, bluntly stated that the EU’s appeal to many senior officials and politicians was the prospect of lucrative (and usually tax-free) jobs in the vast, non-transparent, and unaccountable Brussels bureaucracy. However, on a sour note, Marta Kos, the European Commissioner for EU Enlargement, said that a great deal of misinformation and fake news had circulated in Iceland before the referendum, both domestically and from east and west; right-wing populists had been vocal and had spent a great deal of money. She added that, nevertheless, the result showed that 47 per cent of Icelanders wanted to join the EU, compared with 19 per cent in 2010.
No Misinformation from East or West
It is interesting that Kos interpreted the outcome as indicating that 47 per cent of Icelanders voted to join the EU, even though the Yes Camp had strenuously denied that the referendum was about membership: it was only about seeing what the EU was offering. The No Camp, by contrast, had pointed out that the referendum was about membership: it was about resuming the accession talks. Even more interesting is Kos’s assertion that misinformation from the east and west had circulated in Iceland. By misinformation from the east, she presumably meant Putin’s Russia. But no interference thence has been detected. The only example offered was laughable. It was that a well-known Swiss lawyer, an expert on EU law, had given a lecture in Iceland on the EU while he was legal counsel to an Icelandic company that had referred a dispute with the Icelandic authorities over alleged Russian ownership to the EFTA Surveillance Authority. No interference from the US has been detected either. In fact, the Yes Camp failed to make Trump an issue in the campaign. The debate was mainly, as it should have been, on what Iceland would gain or lose from EU membership.
The Well-Funded Yes Camp
Kos presented no evidence that the No Camp had spent a great deal of money on the campaign. In fact, the Yes Camp advertised at least as much as the No Camp, although the No Camp certainly held more meetings all around the country, mostly organised by volunteers. The Yes Camp also received help from the Foreign Ministry, not only through the biased information provided on its website, but also because some staff members fully participated in the campaign, for example, a special advisor to the Foreign Minister, Heida Kristín Helgadóttir. The Yes Camp also received support from the government broadcasting company, RÚV, which published a totally false report the day before the referendum about donations by Icelandic companies to the Brexit campaign. In recent years, the EU has funded many RÚV programmes.
EU-Funded Professors
Three university professors who have received generous EU funding also actively participated in the campaign. The historian Gudmundur Hálfdanarson sought to mock the No Camp’s claims about the nineteenth-century independence struggle. The political scientist Baldur Thórhallsson argued that by joining the EU, Iceland would not have to transfer any part of her sovereignty from Reykjavík to Brussels. The European Movement in Iceland was led by the political scientist Magnús Skjöld, who, at present, is a Jean Monnet Professor and has at his disposal, for research, travel and meetings, at least €60,000 over three years from the EU, a significant sum in a tiny country.