Left must oppose Iceland joining the EU

In an opinion article published by mbl.is, Mímir Kristjánsson argues that Iceland’s left wing must oppose European Union membership, first in the referendum on opening membership negotiations on August 29 and later in any final vote on joining.

Kristjánsson describes the EU as a machine that transfers power and wealth from the public to bureaucratic and economic elites. He says the union is founded on the so-called four freedoms, which concern the free movement of goods, services, labour and capital, rather than freedoms such as expression or the press.

He argues that this has created a bureaucratic system in Brussels with a significant democratic deficit, where public organisations have little influence compared with numerous and well-funded interest groups.

In Norway, both the European Economic Area and the EU are viewed as a subscription service for right-wing policies, he writes, producing a steady stream of demands for privatisation and greater competition. The natural endpoint of the four freedoms, he argues, is a fully integrated European single market in which wages in countries such as Iceland and Norway would have to be brought into line with wages in Portugal or Romania.

Kristjánsson says there are already signs of this development, as the free movement of labour within the EEA has contributed to widespread social dumping unless oversight is significantly strengthened. In such a common market, national parliaments would effectively be pushed out of the picture, or at least subordinated to the market’s economic rules, he argues. The result would be major defeats for both workers’ rights and democratic government.

He says the issue is more about democratic government than about being on the right or left. Iceland, a country of about 400,000 people, would have little meaningful influence in the European Parliament, he argues, adding that the parliament has very limited power. In the EU, he writes, money is what determines outcomes.

What remains of public authority is framed by an intricate network of laws and regulations, he says, increasing the power of lawyers at the expense of representatives elected by the public, both in national states and at the European level.

Control over national natural resources is particularly important for Iceland, Kristjánsson writes. He points to developments in Norway, where he says the EU has sought to take control of hydropower through the EEA and ACER, the European energy regulator.

According to Kristjánsson, EU rules have prevented Norwegian politicians from regaining control over the country’s energy system, which can no longer provide households and businesses with energy at stable and predictable prices.

If Iceland votes to join the EU, both its agriculture and fisheries would become part of the union, he argues. This would make it more difficult to protect Icelandic agriculture from competition with heavily subsidised EU farming, while opening the way for Icelandic quota owners to sell the country’s fishing resources abroad.

Kristjánsson acknowledges that some Icelanders may feel the distribution of fishing quotas could hardly become more unjust. But he argues that the EU’s neoliberal fisheries policy would be unlikely to bring an reckoning with quota owners. Instead, he says, it would probably lead to the resource becoming concentrated in even fewer hands.