More than half of Reykjavik aid recipients had foreign backgrounds

More than half of the people who received financial assistance from Reykjavik in 2025 had foreign backgrounds, according to figures reported by Morgunblaðið. The city spent ISK 3.429 billion on assistance, down ISK 669 million from 2024.

A total of 3,408 people received support. Icelanders were the largest single group, with 1,509 recipients, or 44.3 per cent of the total. Ukrainians were the largest group among recipients from other countries, followed by people from Palestine, Venezuela and Poland.

According to Helgi Áss Grétarsson, a substitute city council representative for the Centre Party who sits on the welfare council, 790 recipients were Ukrainian, 206 Palestinian, 187 Venezuelan and 134 Polish. Palestinians made up 6 per cent of recipients but received 7.5 per cent of the total assistance. Helgi said the same pattern applied to recipients from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, whose share of the funding exceeded their share of recipients.

The figures were provided by Reykjavik’s welfare department in response to a question from Helgi. The largest expense was support for living costs, which totalled ISK 2.633 billion. The city received ISK 1.108 billion in reimbursement from the state under the law on municipal social services, leaving net expenditure of ISK 2.321 billion.

Helgi said public welfare data should be collected systematically, including information about recipients’ citizenship, and said Denmark tracked such information more closely than Iceland. He also said a trend since 2022 showed that people from some countries, including Palestine and Afghanistan, were more likely to receive grants that exceeded their share of all recipients. While the sums were not especially large in the overall context, he said the trend was a cause for concern.

“We must be able to control who is authorised to be in this country and what is an appropriate composition of immigrants,” Helgi said, adding that Iceland should learn from the experience of neighbouring countries.