Former President: no Icelandic EU membership without control of fisheries

Iceland should make control of its fisheries the first item in any accession negotiations with the European Union, and should walk away early if Brussels will not concede the point, former president Guðni Th. Jóhannesson said this week.

Jóhannesson, a historian who served as president from 2016 to 2024, was speaking on the RÚV program Silfrið on Sunday, ahead of the August 29 referendum on whether Iceland should resume accession talks. Talks opened in 2009 and were shelved in 2013.

He said the condition should be stated up front rather than left to the end of the process.

“I would expect that if a majority of voters want this, the application will state that Icelanders will not be interested in joining the union unless it is clearly guaranteed that control of the resource remains in Icelandic hands,” Jóhannesson said.

Fisheries have been the central obstacle in every previous discussion of Icelandic membership. The Common Fisheries Policy vests management of member states’ waters in the EU, with quotas set on the basis of historical catch records.

“We have built a fisheries management system here that is not without flaws. We have done better than the European Union and we want to keep that result,” Jóhannesson said. “We are on our own here. We stand alone with our fishing experience of recent decades. That is the message.”

He compared the referendum to the Cod Wars, the confrontations with Britain that ended with Iceland’s 200-mile limit in 1976.

“If the people in charge in Brussels do not grasp that, it is better to call it quits sooner rather than later,” he said.

Guðni did not say whether he supported EU membership itself, stressing instead that the fisheries question should be settled at the outset of any renewed negotiations. He said he hoped Icelanders would accept the result of the referendum.