Former minister warns EU bid may weaken Icelandic safeguards

Former Fisheries and Agriculture Minister Jón Bjarnason says the current Icelandic government appears unlikely to maintain the same reservations in its European Union membership application that Iceland’s parliament set when the Social Democratic Alliance and Left-Green Movement government applied for membership in 2009. He told mbl.is that this would be a cause for concern.

Members of Iceland’s parliament faced a major decision when they voted on July 16, 2009, on whether to apply for EU membership, Bjarnason said.

“This application was an extremely serious matter. It involved opening the heart of the Icelandic nation to transferring control of its resources and its existence as an independent nation, even though the issue was presented as being about specific negotiating chapters,” he said.

Bjarnason said there had effectively been two options: rejecting the application and remaining an independent and sovereign nation that made agreements with other countries on the same basis as in previous decades, or joining the EU and accepting its rules and decision-making authority.

“There was really no middle ground, since it was not offered,” he said.

He said it had incorrectly been claimed that negotiations on individual chapters would be easy because Iceland had already adopted various rules through the European Economic Area Agreement.

“It is quite another thing to transfer control over your own affairs than to accept certain trade chapters,” he said.

Bjarnason became minister of the two policy areas most involved in the membership negotiations, fisheries and agriculture. He said it had been clear to both parties in the government that he would not support an outcome involving the transfer of control over those resources.

He also recalled that the application was approved by the Icelandic parliament in an unusual way in the summer of 2009. It was introduced as a private members’ bill rather than as a government bill, following an agreement between the parties when the government was formed that each member of parliament would decide independently how to vote.

As a result, the application was never formally submitted to the government during the application process. It was approved with support from opposition members, while five Left-Green Movement members voted against it: Atli Gíslason, Ásmundur Einar Daðason, Jón Bjarnason, Lilja Rafney Magnúsdóttir and Þuríður Backman. Guðríður Lilja Grétarsdóttir abstained.

Bjarnason said the parliamentary resolution was also significantly amended from the original proposal by then Foreign Minister Össur Skarphéðinsson. The changes set out stronger reservations on fisheries, agriculture, energy, food, financial and judicial matters.

He said responsibility for those reservations lay with the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.