How inaccurate claims may have affected Iceland's EU referendum

Uncertainty over fishing quotas may have made many Icelandic voters reluctant to embark on an EU membership pathway.

The country voted no on 29 August on resuming negotiations with Brussels by 52.8%, with the talks between the two on hold since 2013.

The campaign was fierce and, as with many crucial public votes in recent years, was also marked by inaccurate claims circulating online and among media channels.

One of them involved the referendum’s main sticking point: fisheries.

A few media outlets reported on talks between Iceland’s foreign affairs minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir and Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten about a special exemption from the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.

They said that Gunnarsdóttir claimed that such exemptions were discussed and that the Dutch government strongly denied her version of events.

However, Gunnarsdóttir later rejected those claims, prompting the press to admit the story had been largely misreported.

Yet it touched a sensitive nerve: control over fishing grounds is fiercely guarded in Iceland, so much so that it led to a series of confrontations between Iceland and the UK in the 1950s and the 1970s — known as the Cod Wars.

Joining the EU would likely mean giving up part of its quota, under the Common Fisheries Policy, although there is no consensus on how much exactly Iceland would have to give up.

Some experts argue the quota would be minimal, mainly involving pelagic fish species (i.e. herrings, sardines, mackerel) that migrate across the sea and so are not stationed permanently in Icelandic waters.

However, failing to address this sensitive issue early on may have dulled voters’ enthusiasm for EU membership, according to international relations expert Arno Minasian.

“Iceland didn’t get to negotiate fisheries and agriculture in 2009, either,” he told Euronews’ fact-checking team, The Cube. “The EU and Iceland never actually got to those chapters, which is concerning, because those are the really big, important chapters for Iceland.”

Some 4% of Iceland’s workforce is employed in fisheries, and the sector accounts for around 8% of its GDP. “So fisheries have a lot of economic and political weight,” Minasian added.

“If Iceland and the EU cannot negotiate this in the first place, it’s quite unrealistic that Icelanders would agree on imposing these quotas through the Common Fisheries Policy,” he said.

All of the obligations, none of the benefits?

Another misleading claim was about Iceland’s EU-related rights as a non-EU member.

Some, such as former Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, said that, since Iceland is already part of the European Economic Area, it already enjoys all the benefits of EU membership.

Gunnlaugsson, who is now leader of the Centre Party, added that joining the EU would mean taking on just downsides and obligations, rather than any extra benefits.

While it is true that, as a member of the European Economic Area, Reykjavík is already playing by much of the EU’s economic playbook, by not being a member of the EU itself, it has no seat at the table when the rules are defined.

Iceland does not have votes in the European Parliament, nor a role in the European Commission. It also misses out on certain EU subsidies and funds, to name just a few.

When it comes to the cost of accessing the EU, the opposing camps cited drastically different numbers.

The “No” front set the figure as high as €1 billion a year, while prominent pro-EU figures said it would be just over €50 million.

The latter seems much closer to the truth, according to a study by the independent think tank Evropustraumar, which claimed Iceland’s net EU membership cost would be around €60 million a year.

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