Iceland is in Europe. But it is not in the European Union.<\/p>\n
For a long time, that was just fine for Iceland, which has fiercely protected its independence \u2014 and its control over its fishing industry.<\/p>\n
Not so much anymore. In recent months, the top of the world has felt precarious as President Trump repeatedly threatened to \u201cget\u201d Greenland<\/a>, Iceland\u2019s closest neighbor. And the 400,000 or so Icelanders have been seriously debating the once unthinkable: Has the time come to try to join the bloc?<\/p>\n \u201cThe Greenland crisis definitely hit a nerve,\u201d Prime Minister Kristrun Frostadottir said in February, in an interview at her office in Reykjavik, Iceland\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n Now, she said, foreign policy is more prominent in voters\u2019 minds: \u201cThings have definitely shifted.\u201d<\/p>\n Iceland is heading toward a referendum as soon as<\/a> this summer on whether to plunge into exploratory talks with the European Union about membership. The process could take years, but the fact that there is a big debate signals a real change.<\/p>\n A Mutual Flirtation<\/p>\n Of course, the bloc does not accept just anyone. Iceland would be an attractive get.<\/p>\n It sits way out in the North Atlantic at the gateway to the Arctic. It would offer the European Union an important foothold in a region where superpowers are vying for dominance.<\/p>\n It is also a wealthy country that almost outpaces the bloc on metrics like gender equality and life expectancy.<\/p>\n For Icelanders, the appeal of the European Union is mostly about stability.<\/p>\n Many Icelanders gasped as Mr. Trump confused their country<\/a> with Greenland and seethed<\/a> at reports<\/a> that Billy Long, the pick to be the new American ambassador to Reykjavik, had joked that Iceland could become the 52nd state. Mr. Long quickly apologized<\/a>.<\/p>\n Few think Mr. Trump would threaten them directly. But Iceland is the only NATO country without a military and has relied on the alliance, and specifically America, for its defense.<\/p>\n Now that the United States has become a less reliable ally, some Icelanders feel they need insurance. Even though the European Union is not a military force, it does have a little-known clause in its charter that could be used for mutual defense<\/a>. In March, the bloc and Iceland signed a defense partnership<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople feel that they might be forced to pick a side,\u201d said Eirikur Bergmann, a politics professor at Bifrost University in Iceland. \u201cAnd then there is really only one side to pick.\u201d<\/p>\n Fish, Fish, Fish<\/p>\n It may come down to fish.<\/p>\n Helgi Haraldsson lives an hour south of Reykjavik in Sandgerdi, a small coastal community where most mornings small boats set out for cod. I joined him on a recent day, launching just after 2 a.m., on a 36-foot boat, the Margret GK-33.<\/p>\n The waves grew, and soon I turned green. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t supposed to be like this,\u201d said Mr. Haraldsson, the captain, wincing as I heaved.<\/p>\n In a calmer moment, he explained to me that he leans toward voting no on the E.U. talks because he is worried about his bottom line.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to protect this fishing industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In recent years, Icelanders have watched with alarm as Ireland, an E.U. member, has endured cuts to fishing quotas that have devastated its coastal communities<\/a>. In Iceland, fishing is a much bigger part of the economy.<\/p>\n Some Icelanders are heartened by signs that the European Union may be willing to compromise<\/a> on fishing quotas, if it means bringing Iceland into the bloc.<\/p>\n Still, Mr. Haraldsson knows that a negotiation means giving something up.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we allow them to come and fish in our restricted areas, it will go terribly wrong,\u201d he said, as dawn broke orange around him.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is just a certain amount of fish in the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018See What\u2019s in the Package\u2019<\/p>\n There could be upsides.<\/p>\n Iceland\u2019s currency, the krona, has long been volatile, while the euro is stable. Inflation<\/a> is so high that some people have even started complaining about the price of a beloved staple, hot dogs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Robert Imsland, a teacher with three children, shook his head after buying two on a recent morning. \u201cEven though they are cheap,\u201d he said, \u201cit is really expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n So is just about everything else. (Inflation<\/a> is currently about 5.2 percent, close to double that of the European Union<\/a>.) Groceries can be expensive, experts said, in part because of taxes on products imported from the bloc.<\/p>\n That makes the European Union and the euro seem like a better bet. \u201cI will be able to buy cheaper groceries,\u201d Mr. Imsland said. <\/p>\n It all depends on how the talks on joining the bloc shake out. Early<\/a> polls<\/a> have indicated that a referendum on starting them would be close.<\/p>\n The debate remains uncharacteristically divisive, said Magnus Tryggvason, a swim coach who lives about an hour east of Reykjavik.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will dominate the landscape of Icelandic politics in the next months,\u201d he sighed.<\/p>\n He said he would vote yes. After all, he said, the talks are nonbinding \u2014 there is no real downside.<\/p>\n \u201cSee what\u2019s in the package,\u201d he said. \u201cThen people can decide.\u201d<\/p>\n Egill Bjarnason contributed reporting from Husavik, Iceland, and Jeffrey Gettleman from London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iceland is in Europe. But it is not in the European Union. For a long time, that was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[31965,2307,49134,31964,26,28958,49135,71,73,158,49133,8760,57,2735,1583,3041,2378,157,31963,21606,49136,132,27319,75,76,31966,28955],"class_list":["post-94146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-greenland","tag-arctic-regions","tag-commercial","tag-debates-political","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-denmark","tag-donald-j","tag-economic-conditions-and-trends","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-finland","tag-fish-and-other-marine-life","tag-fishing","tag-greenland","tag-iceland","tag-international-relations","tag-ireland","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-norway","tag-politics-and-government","tag-referendums","tag-reykjavik-iceland","tag-sweden","tag-territorial-disputes","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}