Iceland’s foreign minister held unreported meeting with EU enlargement chief
Wednesday 11th November 2026 on 22:31 in
Iceland
Iceland’s Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir met European Union enlargement chief Marta Kos in Brussels on January 15, 2025, mbl.is reports. The meeting was not mentioned in a Foreign Ministry statement issued that day.
The statement highlighted Gunnarsdóttir’s meetings with EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas and trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič. It said she had outlined the government’s plans to hold a referendum on whether to continue accession talks by 2027 at the latest, and had stressed the importance of closer Iceland-EU cooperation and protecting the European Economic Area partnership.
The meeting with Kos was disclosed more than a year later in documents the Foreign Ministry compiled at the request of Alþingi’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Former minister Björn Bjarnason discusses the meeting in his new book, When Iceland said no, which examines the lead-up to the August 29 referendum on resuming EU accession talks. Bjarnason spoke about the issue on the programme Spursmál.
Asked whether the omission could have been an oversight, Bjarnason said he did not believe that was possible. He said disclosing the meeting at the time would have changed how the Brussels visit was perceived.
During Gunnarsdóttir’s visit, EU Commission spokesperson Guillaume Mercier told RÚV that the Commission still considered Iceland an applicant country. An EU statement about the visit also said Iceland’s application remained active because it had never been formally withdrawn.
Bjarnason said EU officials in Brussels had received “the wrong messages” about developments in Iceland ahead of the referendum, particularly about the chances voters would back restarting accession talks. He said the government believed it would win if the vote were brought forward, and that Brussels officials had been led to believe an early vote was needed to secure a victory.
He also pointed to a June 2026 proposal from the European Commission’s enlargement directorate asking the EU Council for a mandate to prepare talks with Iceland.