10 years after Brexit, European leaders once again stayed silent through a landmark referendum on EU membership, showing how little Brussels has learned from its own mistakes.
On Sunday, EU officials absorbed the news that Icelanders had voted against resuming EU membership negotiations, in a knife-edge referendum that split 52.8% to 47.2%. Their response was muted at best.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made no public statement, leaving an anonymous spokesperson to say only that Brussels had taken “note” of the results.
European Council President António Costa was one of the few to break the silence, saying through his spokesperson that “the EU fully respects the democratic choice of the Icelandic people in today’s referendum. Iceland remains one of the EU’s closest and most trusted partners.”
This reticence was consistent with how the Commission kept a low profile throughout the campaign, raising the question of whether the EU’s institutional instinct for neutrality is politically self-defeating when the vote concerns the EU itself.
“We had a very harsh campaign. A lot of money. You could almost hear the echoes of Brexit, and the whole Brexit playbook was part of it,” Dagur Eggertsson, MP and former Mayor of Reykjavík, told Europe Today.
Keeping a low profile
The Icelandic government asked Brussels not to interfere.
In a response to a parliamentary question in June, Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir stressed that “this is a domestic matter, this is domestic politics, and it is the domestic decision of Icelanders to start these talks or not, and of course we do not want unreasonable interference.”
At the same time, Frostadóttir noted that if people had questions about the EU, it would not be unusual for Brussels to answer them. That effort to keep the temperature down was consistent with the wider pro-EU camp’s strategy.
Hulda Þórisdóttir, a professor at the University of Iceland, told Euronews that the Eurosceptic campaign managed to raise the stakes, framing the referendum as a straight choice on EU membership, while the pro-European camp tried to downplay that stake, emphasising it was just about resuming negotiations.
“This is not an election about membership and not about adaptation, as there will be another referendum on an accession agreement if the result is yes,” Frostadóttir told the Washington Post ahead of the vote.
Senior EU officials followed a similar script. Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos gave several interviews to Icelandic media outlets, including public broadcaster RÚV, focusing on the enlargement process and what the negotiations would entail in practice.
“The Icelandic vote is a warning for Europe. Fears about fishing and emotional arguments, sometimes false, have defeated the reasons for the ‘Yes’. We respect the vote, but the message is clear: the EU must change,” said MEP Sandro Gozi (France/Renew).
Sovereignty in question
The campaign on both sides focused on economic issues. The ‘Yes’ camp argued that joining the EU would lower interest rates on debt and reduce currency instability, opening the way to euro adoption.
The ‘No’ campaign, in turn, warned that EU membership would mean changing how the country runs its fisheries and farming industries — vital interests in the rural regions where the Eurosceptic vote triumphed.
“It wasn’t only about economic interests. It was deeper than that. The arguments of the ‘No’ campaign resonated much more because they were closer to the Icelandic identity,” Þórisdóttir said.
For the ‘No’ camp, in other words, the vote touched on something existential: having won hard-fought independence from Denmark in 1944, Iceland was determined not to cede sovereignty to another, larger power.
“The referendum on August 29th is not just about the European Union. It is about whether we believe the Icelandic people themselves are best placed to determine their future,” Björn Bjarnason, a former minister from the Eurosceptic Independence Party, wrote in a blog post.
The underlying message of the successful ‘No’ campaign was that the EU is not a shield against larger powers, but one of the powers Iceland needs to stay independent from if it wants to remain a fully sovereign member of the international community.
At the same time, Brussels declined to expose itself politically in the campaign, in what some see as a parallel with the Brexit campaign, which shows the EU has not learned the relevant lessons.
Reminiscent of Brexit
Just as Reykjavik has done now, UK Prime Minister David Cameron previously urged the EU institutions not to intervene. In both cases, Brussels respected the request.
“I understand the political principle of non-interference in a constitutional referendum of a member state,” Charles Tannock, a former MEP for the UK Conservatives who campaigned for Remain, told Euronews.
“But I do think it was a mistake, though, not to correct lies and misinformation.”
Brussels’ silence during the Brexit referendum was particularly striking given allegations that a foreign power was providing financial support to the Leave campaign, Tannock said — though he noted no definitive evidence was ever found.
In Iceland, the ‘No’ campaign was significantly better financed than the ‘Yes.’
“It was a mistake not to intervene and not to interfere because we would have been the only ones to destroy the lies which were circulated,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told the press in 2019. “I was wrong to be silent at an important moment.”
Of course, it is always easier with hindsight to say what should have been done differently — and it’s debatable whether senior EU officials speaking out would have helped the European integration cause, given how carefully they would have had to walk that tightrope to avoid a backlash.
Still, on both occasions the EU managed to alienate voters by seeming to threaten their say over their own affairs, while at the same time refusing to play the prominent political role its detractors accused it of wanting.
“The EU has this reputation, rightly or wrongly, of being very top-down, and not really being sensitive about these sorts of arguments regarding protecting national identity and sovereignty,” Tannock said.
“The EU could have done much more to say it is a project based on member states, and that Iceland would still be Iceland 100%,” he added.