Ólafur Ragnar criticises Össur over EU membership talks

Former Icelandic President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has contrasted Steingrímur J. Sigfússon’s and Össur Skarphéðinsson’s positions on restarting membership negotiations with the European Union, mbl.is reports. Both held key roles in the process in 2009, when Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir’s government applied for Iceland to join the EU, but they now draw sharply different conclusions from that experience.

Ólafur Ragnar said Steingrímur, who handled fisheries and agriculture during the latter part of the negotiations, had described in detail how Iceland’s most important interests never reached the agenda.

Steingrímur has spoken publicly ahead of the referendum and said he will vote no. He has referred to his experience of the previous negotiations and said that key chapters, including fisheries and agriculture, had not been opened when the process ran out of momentum.

In an interview with Spursmál, Ólafur Ragnar said Steingrímur and Össur were the two people who knew the previous membership process best. Össur was foreign minister in Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir’s government and led the negotiations on Iceland’s behalf.

Ólafur Ragnar said he placed considerably more weight on Steingrímur’s account of what happened.

“It was what Steingrímur J. described very thoroughly, as one of the two living men who know this previous journey best: why it failed, why Iceland’s interests were never addressed and why Iceland was not even afforded the respect of having them discussed,” Ólafur Ragnar said.

Iceland did not control the process

He said the experience showed that Iceland did not decide which negotiating chapters were opened or the order in which they were addressed. The EU’s negotiating system determined that, he said.

Ólafur Ragnar therefore considered it unrealistic to assume that Icelandic authorities could simply decide to begin with the most difficult issues.

In his view, the government had not explained why it now believed it could reach an agreement on issues that had not been resolved during the previous process. He also questioned why there had not been a detailed review of the reasons the negotiations had stalled at the time.

The interview then turned to Össur Skarphéðinsson, who has been a strong supporter of restarting the membership negotiations.