Iceland’s rejection of renewed EU accession talks is about more than one Nordic country’s relationship with Brussels. It reveals a wider challenge for Europe: the geopolitical case for enlargement is becoming stronger just as the politics of sovereignty risk making both enlargement and the reforms needed to deliver it more difficult.
On 29 August, Icelanders were asked a relatively modest question: should their country resume accession negotiations with the European Union?
They said no. By 52.8% to 47.2%, Icelanders chose not to reopen negotiations suspended more than a decade ago.
This was not a referendum on EU membership. Had Iceland voted yes, negotiations would have resumed and any eventual accession agreement would still have had to return to Icelandic voters. Yet the result matters far beyond Reykjavík.
Only weeks before the vote, EU diplomats were hoping that Iceland could provide a symbolic boost to enlargement. At a time when Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova are seeking to advance towards membership, the return of a wealthy, stable Nordic democracy to the accession process would have demonstrated the continuing attractiveness of the European project.
Instead, Iceland has provided Europe with a more uncomfortable lesson.
Geopolitics is not enough
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, EU enlargement has undergone a remarkable transformation. What had increasingly become a slow and technocratic process has returned to the centre of European geopolitics. Enlargement is now described not simply as a tool for transforming candidate countries, but as a strategic investment in Europe’s security. However, this narrative did not include Iceland which lacks any military resources of its own.
Few countries illustrate this new geopolitical environment better than Iceland. Russia’s war against Ukraine, growing competition in the Arctic and uncertainty surrounding the transatlantic relationship have transformed the strategic environment of the North Atlantic. Yet these arguments were not enough for a majority of Icelandic voters.
The Icelandic campaign ultimately turned on much more familiar concerns: fisheries, agriculture, sovereignty and national control. The geographical divide was striking. Reykjavík backed reopening negotiations, while rural and fishing-dependent constituencies decisively rejected it.
The lesson should resonate in Brussels. Geopolitical urgency can strengthen the case for European integration, but it cannot replace domestic political consent.
This matters particularly for the Western Balkans, Ukraine and Moldova. Their accession may increasingly be understood in Brussels as a geopolitical necessity. But citizens do not experience enlargement as an abstract geopolitical strategy. They experience it through questions about jobs, agriculture, identity, migration, economic opportunity and political sovereignty. Winning the geopolitical argument is therefore not the same thing as winning the political argument.
Integration without membership
Iceland also exposes another problem that deserves greater attention as the EU increasingly turns to gradual integration as part of its enlargement strategy.
Iceland is hardly detached from Europe. Through the European Economic Area, it participates extensively in the Single Market. It belongs to Schengen, participates in numerous EU programmes and agencies and applies a significant body of EU legislation. Around two-thirds of its foreign trade is with EU Member States.
Iceland is therefore an unusual enlargement case: rather than transforming itself in order to integrate with the EU, it is already deeply integrated while remaining outside its political institutions. And Icelanders have now chosen to preserve that arrangement.
This makes Iceland an important, but also distinctive, case for the EU’s emerging approach towards current candidate countries.
Brussels is rightly offering candidate countries more benefits before accession. Gradual access to the Single Market, EU programmes and other policies can make enlargement more tangible and prevent candidate societies from waiting years before experiencing the benefits of integration.
But Iceland also demonstrates the limits of integration without membership. Participation in the Single Market and EU programmes does not provide representation in the institutions where many of the rules governing that integration are decided. Nor should Iceland’s experience be mechanically transposed to the Western Balkans, Ukraine or Moldova, where the economic, political and security incentives for full membership are considerably different.
The lesson is therefore not that gradual integration risks making membership less attractive. Rather, it is that the EU needs to remain clear about the distinction between integration and membership. For today’s candidate countries, gradual integration can make the benefits of Europe tangible before accession, but it should complement - not replace - a credible pathway towards full membership.
Even bigger challenge inside the EU
There is another, perhaps less obvious, lesson from Iceland.
Europe needs to prepare itself for enlargement. A Union of more than 30 members will inevitably raise difficult questions about decision-making, the EU budget, cohesion and agricultural policies, institutional representation and the use of national vetoes. The European debate has consequently turned towards “pre-enlargement reform”: changing how the Union works before new members arrive.
But Iceland reminds us that this debate will take place in a political environment in which sovereignty remains an extraordinarily powerful argument.
This creates an enlargement paradox. Europe’s deteriorating security environment makes a larger and geopolitically stronger Union increasingly necessary. Yet the same period of insecurity, political fragmentation and distrust can reinforce demands for national control.
Many of the reforms discussed in preparation for enlargement - particularly limiting unanimity or expanding qualified-majority decision-making - can easily be presented by sovereignist political forces as another transfer of power from national capitals to Brussels.
The EU cannot therefore approach its own enlargement preparedness as a technocratic exercise. Institutional reform needs political legitimacy. European leaders must explain not simply why a larger Union needs to work differently, but why reform can strengthen Member States’ capacity to protect their interests in a world dominated by much larger powers.
Enlargement’s communication problem
The Icelandic vote should finally prompt some reflection about how Europe communicates enlargement.
For too long, enlargement has been communicated through the vocabulary of Brussels: chapters, clusters, benchmarks, screening reports and alignment with the acquis. These instruments are indispensable for accession. They are considerably less effective at explaining why enlargement matters to citizens.
If enlargement is now a geopolitical project, it also needs a political constituency. That means communicating not only with governments and experts, but with civil societies - both in candidate countries and inside the EU. It also means engaging actors that connect these societies.
Diaspora communities, for example, are often simultaneously embedded in EU Member States and closely connected to political and social debates in their countries of origin. They can become important bridges in explaining what European integration means in practice.
Communication will not eliminate disagreements over sovereignty, nor should it. But enlargement cannot succeed through elite consensus alone.
Iceland has just demonstrated why. The result should not be interpreted as Iceland turning its back on Europe. Iceland remains one of the EU’s closest partners and one of Europe's most deeply integrated non-members. Nor does a narrow referendum result determine Iceland's European future forever.
But the vote does puncture a comfortable assumption that today's geopolitical instability will automatically translate into greater support for European integration. It will not. If the EU wants enlargement to succeed, it must simultaneously make the geopolitical case, demonstrate the concrete value of membership, prepare its own institutions and build public support for the Europe it is trying to create.
The strategic case for a larger Europe may be stronger than it has been for decades. Iceland has reminded us that the political case still has to be won.
