{"id":270209,"date":"2025-07-17T20:27:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T20:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/270209\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T20:27:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T20:27:14","slug":"iceland-to-launch-talks-on-defence-partnership-with-eu-von-der-leyen-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/270209\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland to launch talks on defence partnership with EU, von der Leyen says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Published on
\n 17\/07\/2025 – 20:57 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday that the EU will launch talks on a security and defence partnership with Iceland.<\/p>\n

“We will cooperate more closely on hybrid threat response, civil protection and secure communications,” von der Leyen said in a post on X after a press conference in Keflav\u00edk with Iceland\u2019s Prime Minister Kristr\u00fan Frostad\u00f3ttir.<\/p>\n

Frostad\u00f3ttir said she was hopeful that talks would conclude by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

“This is very important for us to show that we can have cooperation on critical infrastructure, civil protection, any sort of dual use defence investment and this also includes hybrid and cyber threats,” she said.<\/p>\n

This agreement with the EU is independent of Iceland’s NATO membership and existing defence agreements with the United States, national public broadcaster R\u00daV said.<\/p>\n

“With this agreement, Iceland has also entered the European security and defines cooperation,” von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n

“There are already eight allied countries, including Norway, the United Kingdom and Canada. With this agreement, you will gain access to our SAFE project, which invests around \u20ac150 billion per year in security and defence.”<\/p>\n

At the meeting, Frostad\u00f3ttir also said a comprehensive review of Iceland’s terms of trade with the European Union, announced in December 2023, would start soon.<\/p>\n

Iceland’s government said in December that it aims to put the question of EU membership to a referendum by 2027.<\/p>\n

Frostad\u00f3ttir’s administration also said it would set up a panel of experts to look into the advantages and disadvantages of retaining the\u00a0Icelandic crown over adopting the Euro.<\/p>\n

According to a poll conducted last June by market research company Mask\u00edna, support for EU membership among Iceland’s population is growing.<\/p>\n

That poll found just over 54% of respondents were in favour of joining the bloc, with the majority saying they thought households would be financially better off as part of the EU.<\/p>\n

That was a significant swing in favour of membership in a country that has generally been ambivalent about joining the EU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 17\/07\/2025 – 20:57 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699,7059,102593,1220],"class_list":{"0":"post-270209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-iceland","13":"tag-icelandic-politics","14":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114870461620288716","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}