Iceland review - 2012, Page 61

ICELAND REVIEW 59
green Movement.
They managed to work around their
difference of opinion, resulting in Iceland
applying for membership to the EU in July
2009. Eleven months later the negotiation
process started and it is still in action. The
reason why things are moving so fast is that
Iceland has already adopted a large share of
the EU legislation through the European
Economic Area (EEA) agreement. you
could even say the country is to an extent a
70 percent member of the EU already.
deClininG SuPPorT
The prospect of joining the EU became
more real in the aftermath of the financial
collapse in October 2008. Many Icelanders
were angry, blaming the old system for what
went wrong. New solutions were sought
and some speculated whether the fall would
have been less catastrophic if Iceland had
been a member of the EU.
Public opinion polls, published around
the time of the 2009 parliamentary election,
showed support for joining the EU and even
stronger support for starting the application
process. Now, three years later, it’s the other
way around. The latest survey, carried out
by the University of Iceland in April 2012,
describes the development clearly: now 54
percent of respondents oppose joining the
EU, 28 percent are in favor of membership
and 18 percent are undecided.
However, in spite of these results,
Icelanders are generally not opposed to the
EU talks. Approximately 63 percent of the
nation want negotiations to continue, as
indicated in other recent polls. This suggests
that most people want to have the finalized
deal on the table and see what the EU has
to offer.
Many reasons have been mentioned in
regard to declining support for joining the
EU, the most probable being the European
economic crisis. When constantly bom-
barded with bad news from the Eurozone,
it becomes easy to doubt its excellence.
Another explanation could be the unpopu-
larity of the current government; everything
it does gets viewed in a negative light.
THe newS CoveraGe
The biggest Icelandic newspaper,
Fréttablaðið, is pro-EU. It approaches the
matter meekly and invests much energy in
rectifying false statements. On the other end
of the scale, the country’s second-largest
newspaper, the once mighty Morgunblaðið,
strongly opposes the EU. It reports aggres-
sively against the EU and sometimes crosses
the line on ethics when covering EU-related
issues.
The Icelandic coalition government is
notably split on the EU question and its
ministers have actively voiced their differ-
ence of opinion in the media. Minister of
the Interior Ögmundur Jónasson of the
Left-greens once wrote in Morgunblaðið:
“The same could happen to us as the
Native Americans. They lost their land,
and the only thing they had left was glass
pearls and firewater.” And then he went on
to talk about EU imperialism, concluding:
“The only thing missing is the Lebensraum
demand.”
Jóhannes Benediktsson discusses the pros
and cons of joining the European Union.