冰岛公投否决重启入欧谈判

Iceland has rejected a referendum on whether to reopen talks to join the EU. Opponents defeated the measure by a margin of 52.8% to 47.2% with the capital Reykjavik, the only area of the island nation of 400,000 people to support the referendum. Alright. Joining us now to break this down is our friend Ingo Sigfusson. He's a correspondent with Iceland's national broadcaster. Ingo, when we talked to you last week, I don't know.

Maybe it was my own my own thoughts, but I thought the momentum was slightly swinging the other direction. It was always going to be really close. Is this a surprise, or is this kind of what you figured would happen in the end? I think most of us expected this to be roughly the outcome. It is a bigger margin than polls indicated even if we did see indications in polls in the last few days that the no vote was gaining strength and momentum, and those undecided might be leaning that way.

But it's also a very, sort of strict, as you mentioned, Reykjavik, which is you know, it's the capital city, but it's all also home to a fairly significant portion of the population voted very much for, continuing ex action talks. Whereas if you go outside the sort of that more densely populated areas, it's a very, very stark difference. It's almost sixty forty against. Ingo, for those of us who don't pay that much attention to politics, I was told to ask about sheep and fish in this vote.

What can what do I need to know? What do our viewers and listeners need to know? Well, I mean, strangely enough, I would say fish and sheep are both sort of emotional terms in this respect. Yes. The fisheries are a significant industry in Iceland, and agriculture, it exists, but it's a it's a little tricky so far up north as we are. It's not a big economic area, but people are sort of emotionally connected to these industries.

These are sort of the you know, your grandfather was likely a sailor or a a a sheep farmer or your great grandfather at this point possibly, but but people were sort of afraid that this might up and these industries, these ways of life, if you will. And also perhaps punt people in the countryside who are sort of more closely linked to, say, fisheries and and farming, they likely, as in many other countries, feel that power is already centered somewhere far away, having its having its center move even further out of the country to Brussels, likely felt like they were being completely robbed of their influence.

It's interesting though because this is a dynamic that we see play out almost universally right now. We have it in The US. You see it in The UK. It's this, urban versus rural voter block, especially when it comes to joining these larger associations like the EU. When you look at Brexit, the Brexit vote went mostly the same way. Right? Urban cities voted to remain, but it was rural Northern England farmers that voted to leave.

What does that say about you know, this all happened because Iceland, middle powers, smaller countries are reevaluating whether or not they need the protections of these bigger alliances. Why do you think that divide and the prevailing issues that got this to a vote in the first place don't resonate as well with more rural voters as they do with the folks, in the capital of Reykjavik? They may resonate, but I just like they feel farther away from power, they may feel farther away from threat.

They may not feel that, you know, Trump, Ukraine, Iran, you know, take a take a pick, it may feel farther away from them or less immediate than it does to sort of the city elites, if you will. But it's also you could also make the case that there hasn't been a very sort of thorough discussion of how the world is changing, how that impacts us, and what we need to reevaluate. I think there is some criticism to be lobbied lobbied at the government for having not made a strong case for why this was the right move at this time and what it would mean.

I think they were a little timid about going all in on the campaign on one end, spending too much political capital, but also afraid of possibly into irritating people on the on the West, in The US, if we sort of started making the argument that Trump, for lack of lack of a better term, was reason enough for us to reevaluate where and how our, who our friends are and where our alliances are. I'm wondering if the rift and the fallout and the trade talks with between The US and Canada had happened last week and was more prevailing in when in people's thoughts when they went and voted on this referendum, if you think that would have changed the numbers any.

I don't think it would have. I think, particularly on the no side, those were simply not the issues they were looking at. They were looking at more bread and butter issues. You know, they were also looking at change. Change is hard. You know, if you want people to take a leap of faith and change, you better make the argument solid. I think there was a bit of a failure on that part. And then on the no part, there there was strong, very dramatic, and emotional arguments.

You could say some of them veered into the sort of zone of disinformation really, but they were scare tactics work that much. Also know from politics in recent years, and I think a lot of people were afraid of stuff like Icelandic youth being drafted into a European military, a military which doesn't exist, stuff like that. So I think for a lot of people, the the choice seemed, do we engage with this scary new world, or do we just shut the door and make it go away as if that was a real possibility?

I mean, that's generally how I confront my problems, but, you know, I expect more from It's tempting. Right? Right. Exactly. Well, just to we have about thirty seconds here. Iceland first applied to join the block in 2009. Four years later, it was thrown away. What's next? Are we going to revisit this as a topic of conversation as a vote in the near term, or is this done and dusted? I think, you know, accession talks are dead for the time being.

I think focus now largely will shift to Norway where the debate about whether they should be part of the same club that we're part of, which is the European economic area, which the EU largely sees as a lobby for properly joining. We've been there for thirty some years. The Norwegians are giving it some thought. They think the lobby isn't maybe working as well as they used to, and they may need to move. That will probably take some years, but my guess is that's what will impact the debate in the coming years.

Alright.