Icelanders vote this Saturday (Aug. 29) in a referendum on whether to resume accession talks with the European Union (EU), suspended since 2013. The ballot is widely read as a move closer to Europe and away from Donald Trump's United States, whose threats to annex neighboring Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, revived the debate, according to reports by Brazil's Folha de S.Paulo and the US magazine Foreign Policy.
The process had been dormant for over a decade. Iceland applied to join the bloc in 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis that brought down its banking system, but talks were halted after the 2013 elections, largely because of domestic resistance to the EU's common fisheries policy. In March this year, the government of Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir brought the issue back. Beyond Trump's moves, Reykjavik is worried about Russia's and China's activities in an Arctic opened up by melting ice. Each power has its own stake: Washington wants broader access to the region and its strategic minerals; Moscow and Beijing are vying for routes and resources; and Brussels is dealing with a country already tied to the European market through the European Economic Area (EEA), an arrangement that grants market access without a seat at the decision table.
For Brazil, the vote matters indirectly but concretely. The country negotiates with the European Union as a bloc, through Mercosur, the South American trade group, and follows any change in the composition and cohesion of the European club. The episode also exposes a pattern Brasilia watches closely in the Trump era: traditional US allies reassessing their alliances under American pressure, which tends to raise Europe's relative weight as an alternative pole of security and trade.
The symbolic weight of the ballot exceeds the country's size. With no armed forces and fewer than 400,000 people, Iceland is a founding member of NATO, the Western military alliance created in 1949, and has held defense cooperation agreements with the United States since 1951, according to Folha. The relationship with Washington was shaken in January, when Trump threatened to take control of Greenland, through economic coercion or military force, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte negotiated a deal granting the US greater access to the Danish territory, according to Foreign Policy. Trump has mentioned Iceland a few times, but by mistake, mixing up the country's name with Greenland in remarks to the press, Folha reported.
The "yes" campaign is led by the prime minister. Keeping the Icelandic krona "is costing us a ton," Frostadóttir told The Rest Is Politics podcast last month, arguing that adopting the euro would bring investment and stability, according to Foreign Policy. Dagur Eggertsson, a former mayor of Reykjavik and one of the leaders of the pro-EU campaign, credited Washington directly: "Trump has been quite eloquent, not only last year but repeatedly. That is something that makes people on the street think," he told the website Politico. Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir summed up the mood in a recent report on the value of European alliances: "The international system we have lived with since the end of World War II is shaking."
The "no" side focuses on sovereignty. Opponents fear losing control over fisheries, agriculture and natural resources, and note that the country already reaches the European market through the EEA without giving up national decision-making. Iceland ranks among the world's ten highest GDP-per-capita countries, with low unemployment and universal healthcare, which feeds the argument that membership is not vital for local prosperity, according to Foreign Policy.
Polls disagree on the eve of the vote
Surveys point to an unpredictable outcome and contradict each other. Polls cited by Folha give "yes" a narrow numeric lead, 51.3% to 48.7%, a gap smaller than the margin of error. A Gallup survey published on Friday (Aug. 28) shows the reverse picture: 51.6% against restarting negotiations and 48.4% in favor, according to Foreign Policy.
If "yes" wins, the Icelandic government will still have to negotiate the terms of a possible accession deal with Brussels, and any final treaty would go to a second national referendum. Saturday's vote, then, only authorizes the reopening of talks. Still, the gesture already says something about the moment: when even Canada weighs closer ties with the European Union, as Folha noted, the North Atlantic board is no longer the same.