Iceland justice minister urges caution over EU membership application

Iceland’s justice minister, Þorbjörg Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir, has urged the government not to rush into withdrawing the country’s application for European Union membership, mbl.is reports.

She said the government should consider Iceland’s interests carefully and avoid competing to make the strongest statements following a referendum in which voters clearly rejected restarting EU membership talks.

“We need to think about what statements we make regarding European cooperation,” Gunnlaugsdóttir told mbl.is when asked whether the application should be withdrawn.

She said the referendum result was clear and that all government ministers had stated that no further action would be taken on the issue. Adding another argument for withdrawing the application therefore required careful consideration, she said, rather than a rushed post-election response.

Gunnlaugsdóttir said Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir was right to summon the parliamentary foreign affairs committee to a meeting on Monday to review the referendum result. After the meeting, Gunnarsdóttir told Morgunblaðið that any future negotiations with the EU would be longer and more difficult if Iceland withdrew its application now.

The justice minister said the government and parliament should approach the issue calmly. She declined to say definitively whether the application should be withdrawn, although she expressed doubts about doing so.

“We should not compete over who can make the biggest statements. Instead, we should examine what best serves Iceland’s interests, whether that means withdrawing the application or allowing it to remain where it has effectively been for more than 10 years,” she said.

Gunnlaugsdóttir added that she was not strongly convinced it would serve Iceland’s interests to “run” to withdraw an application that was not moving forward in any case.

She acknowledged that Icelanders had clearly rejected resuming EU membership negotiations. The issue will therefore not be put back on the agenda or discussed further by the current government.