Frontex missions saved Iceland’s Coast Guard from mass layoffs

Iceland’s Coast Guard avoided laying off nearly half its staff after the 2008 financial crisis by leasing its vessels and aircraft for European border operations, mbl.is reports, citing a new book about the service’s history.

In an interview in Iceland’s Coast Guard 1926–2026, director Georg Lárusson recalls that the service was struggling to pay the rent on its helicopters. At times, representatives of the lessors came to Iceland to repossess them, and payments fell three to four months behind.

By 2009, the Coast Guard lacked fully equipped rescue helicopters, while a new patrol vessel was being built in Chile and a search-and-surveillance aircraft was nearing completion in Canada. The service had no money, Lárusson said, and held emergency meetings each morning to decide what to cut. Layoff lists had been prepared for nearly half the workforce.

Author Guðni Einarsson says the turning point came when Lárusson and Gylfi Geirsson, who handled international affairs for the Coast Guard, met the European Union border agency Frontex in Poland. The agency needed ships and aircraft for border surveillance, so the Coast Guard leased out its vessels and new aircraft for major operations in the years that followed.

The arrangement helped the service avoid layoffs and cuts to its rescue helicopter operations. Einarsson said Icelandic crews also helped save thousands of lives, mainly in the Mediterranean and also off the west coast of Africa.

The book covers the Coast Guard’s first 100 years. Einarsson wrote its second part; the first, by Guðjón Arngrímsson, covers the service’s first 70 years and was previously published in 1996.