Baudenbacher warns against treating EU vote as harmless poll
Monday 10th August 2026 on 22:15 in
Iceland
Carl Baudenbacher, former president of the EFTA Court, has warned against viewing Iceland’s 29 August referendum as a harmless survey of what the European Union has to offer, mbl.is reported.
He made the remarks at a public meeting on Iceland and the EU held at Sjálfstæðissalurinn, a meeting hall by Austurvöllur in central Reykjavík, on Monday afternoon.
Baudenbacher addressed the argument that EU membership would give Iceland a “seat at the table”. He said the question was instead which table Iceland would join, under what conditions, with what real influence, and what Icelanders would have to give up.
He also discussed possible permanent exemptions from the EU’s common fisheries policy. Such a special arrangement would not be legally ruled out from the outset, he said, but the more closely it resembled Iceland’s current European Economic Area model, the greater the obstacles would be. Membership, he said, meant submitting to the common fisheries policy, which was a core area of EU legislation.
Baudenbacher questioned whether the EU was an attractive option at all. He said membership should be assessed on the basis of the EU’s current position, rather than its position 15 years ago. He also said the European Commission was increasingly acting as a political executive rather than a neutral guardian of the EU treaties.
He said the referendum should be understood as a constitutional choice with political consequences, not as a harmless inquiry into possible terms. Although the vote would formally provide a mandate for negotiations, he said it would in practice be treated as a decision in principle on membership.
Baudenbacher added that the referendum could politically, though not legally, create an irreversible position on Iceland’s path towards EU membership. He said its real objective was not to establish what was on offer, but to make it impossible to turn back from that path.
He said the burden of proof rested with those seeking to replace the EEA Agreement with EU membership.