Icelanders want to remain just that – Icelanders. They are voicing increasingly more vocal opposition to joining the EU bloc, even though they’ve been working on their application since July of 2009. Polls have shown that more and more Icelanders oppose membership. As Member of the Icelandic Parliament, Vigdís Hauksdóttir, explains, every poll for the last two years in Iceland has shown that the majority of people do not want to join the bloc.
The most recent poll, for instance, by Capacent Gallup, was published on August 11th. It showed that 64.5% of the people oppose having EU membership and that 35.5% are in favor. Another poll published on June 30th actually showed that most Icelandic people want to withdraw their application.
There have been many grassroots efforts to abandon the EU application all together, but the government has rejected these out of hand. It will be interesting to see how this progresses and how the Icelandic people deal with the issues that arise as they go through this undesirable process.
