After Icelanders voted no in a referendum on Saturday to opening negotiations with the EU with a view to possible membership of the Union, signs of self-examination on the EU’s behalf are emerging from an unexpected quarter.
– For the EU, this means that we must consider how we can become more attractive, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) shortly before a foreign trip on Monday morning.
The DPA report published in Süddeutsche Zeitung also shows that he hopes Norway will join the EU one day:
“It is not automatically the case that everyone wants to join the EU.” […] “And I think this is an occasion to look at where we can improve, where we can work to increase our attractiveness. This naturally applies particularly to the economic prospects we offer. I still believe that we should not lose sight of the goal of a northern enlargement of the EU. That of course includes Iceland, but then Norway would also be part of it.”
As far as the EU and the economy are concerned, sections of Icelandic business had already expressed scepticism about membership of the Union before the referendum.
In a speech delivered shortly before the EU referendum, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, chief executive of game development company Fenris Creations, said that Iceland’s economic interests are best served outside the Union, the Icelandic business newspaper Viðskiptablaðið recently reported.
The EU, a decaying union, has lost much economic weight over the past thirty years and has weakened considerably compared with the United States and China, Pétursson maintained.
He pointed out that no companies in the EU make the top-ten list of the world’s largest companies, and that the region’s largest company ranks 20th on the list. In 2007, 46 European companies were on the world’s top-100 list, but now there are only 16. Furthermore, 41 “unicorns” (startups valued at one billion dollars or more) moved their headquarters out of the EU between 2008 and 2021, mainly to the United States.
Not even Europeans themselves believe in Europe, he argued:
“European households invest €300 billion a year outside the EU, mainly in the United States. Icelandic pension funds do the same, but the vast majority of their foreign investments go into American innovation. ‘No one really has faith in Europe, at least not enough to invest their money there.’”
Another person pouring cold water on the EU is political editor Lea Verstl of the German broadcaster n-tv.
The EU has presented itself as a safe haven following Trump’s statements about neighbouring Greenland, but the fact is that Icelanders fear EU bureaucracy more than Trump’s foreign policy, she writes.
Iceland is a NATO member, but has no armed forces of its own, and the country’s security is safeguarded by a bilateral agreement with the United States, although the government in Reykjavik has also entered into defence cooperation with the EU.
Verstl rubs it in:
The Icelanders’ rejection reveals an uncomfortable truth: Brussels has so far failed in its attempt to establish itself as a serious geopolitical actor alongside Washington. In addition, mistrust prevails in the core area for which the EU actually stands: economic development.
This is all the more embarrassing because Ursula von der Leyen began her second term as Commission President with a promise to make the EU more competitive. “Cutting bureaucracy” was a watchword she repeated time and again in this context.
Such perspectives are absent when Norwegian politicians and media figures discuss the EU.
