As Iceland prepares to negotiate membership of the EU, Icelanders are torn between feeling it may be best for the country and fears they could lose their independence to faraway Brussels.
After a meltdown of the north Atlantic island’s economy, on Thursday its parliament narrowly backed the government’s plan to begin talks to join the bloc.
However, skepticism to the move is widespread among Icelanders, who jealously guard the traditional waters teaming with red fish, cod, haddock and halibut.
“I don’t think we will get a deal with the EU we can say yes to. The only thing that will get us back on track is honest hard work and fishing,” said Kristjan Gudmundsson, captain of a whale watching boat. “We have survived and thrived as a nation through fishery. This is our gold.”
Iceland — a volcanic island the size of England, but with a population of just 320,000 — stunned the world with the scale and speed of its financial meltdown which followed an unsustainable boom in the financial sector.
Now, Icelanders are trying to pick up the pieces.
Ragnar Stefansson, 27, gave up dentistry in January and went back to fishing because it had become more lucrative.
“After the kronor fell, this is much better money,” he said, as seagulls flew above the dock in the capital of Reykjavik, named “smoky bay” for its steamy landscape.
Steiner Thorsteinsson, a 19-year-old fisherman, says he would vote against the EU if given the chance.
“This is one of the main Icelandic resources — it would be terrible if we lost that,” Thorsteinsson said.
Icelanders fear EU membership could mean tighter controls over what they can catch and leave their waters open to trawlers from other countries.
In a nation isolated by geography, there are growing fears Iceland may get left behind in an increasingly globalized world.
Iceland’s recently elected government wants to gain full access to the world’s biggest single market, the security of the euro and have a voice in the club that now has 27 members.
Inga Jessen last October lost her job in the finance industry and started up a Web site last week that gives tips on free things to do in Reykjavik.
Jessen had taken out Japanese yen loans for two cars and an apartment at the height of the financial boom, similar to many Icelanders who borrowed heavily to pay for their Range Rovers and lifestyles that were envied even by people in the richest countries of the world.
“In principle, I am for entering the EU,” said Methusalem Thorisson, a 62-year-old coffee shop owner. “However, we need to solve our own problems first. We are coming in as beggars. It’s ‘let us in, we’ve made a mess.’ It has a feeling of desperation and I don’t like that. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
RSS