Ólafur Ragnar says EU power structure is the core issue

The European Union’s legal and power structure has largely been overlooked in discussions about possible membership talks with Iceland, former president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson said, according to mbl.is.

He made the remarks in an opening address at a public meeting on Iceland and the EU at Sjálfstæðissalurinn, a meeting hall by Austurvöllur, where he introduced Carl Baudenbacher, former president of the EFTA Court.

Ólafur said the debate had focused heavily on the prices of coffee, pizza and chicken breasts. He argued that it had almost entirely failed to address the EU as one of the most extensive, detailed and thoroughly organised systems of power created in the region since the Second World War.

He also said it was difficult to understand why the Treaty of Lisbon had not been discussed. Whatever the widely discussed package ultimately looked like, he said, the Lisbon, Maastricht and Rome treaties would form its pillars because they defined how the EU worked and how it could address new problems and develop.

Ólafur cited emeritus European law professor Stefán Már Stefánsson, who has said that even if Iceland negotiated exemptions from the EU’s fisheries policy, the European Court of Justice could invalidate them through a preliminary ruling.

The transfer of state powers to the EU would also be substantial, Ólafur said, adding that no country had joined the bloc since 2013. “This is the core of the matter; everything else is just a minor issue,” he said.