On Saturday, Icelanders are likely to do something they haven’t done in more than two decades: Vote a left-wing government into power.
The new government will face the enormous task of cleaning up the wreckage of the country’s collapsed financial system. It will also need to resolve internal divides over a touchstone issue: whether Iceland — long proud of its go-it-alone spirit — should join the European Union.
The parliamentary elections are the North Atlantic nation’s first since the credit crunch in October felled its entire banking system, turning Iceland from a prosperous and happy Nordic country riding high on the riches of finance to a land of swelling unemployment and economic gloom.
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Vilhjalm
2 years ago
This will be old news by the time anyone reads it but it’s an ok article:
hXXp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6164936.ece
“Voters seek hope as Iceland turns nasty”
“Little wonder that the atmosphere is brittle: unemployment has jumped from two to ten per cent in the past six months. Inflation is rocketing, over 15 per cent and moving unstoppably towards 20 per cent. Three companies are going bankrupt every day.
Many people are struggling to repay their inflation-linked mortgages to failed banks which are now owned by the state. The krona is melting. The young are migrating. The whole country is dreading graduation day: the moment when young Icelanders either join the dole queue or leave the island.”
And some typical Icelandic delusional thinking in this article:
“Joining the European monetary union means following stringent entry procedures and indeed becoming part of the EU. That in turn entails signing up for the European fisheries policies and opening up Icelandic waters. The tradeoff could then be: swapping fish for the euro. For the Independent party on the right, and the Left Greens on the other side of the spectrum, that would be a betrayal.
The Social Democrats though are convinced that the euro is the only way forward and seem to think that Brussels will not only welcome Iceland with open arms but make entry possible within the year.
“Of course if we become a member of the EU then we would want to the post of Commissioner for Fisheries,” says Ossur Skarphedinsson, the current foreign minister. That may be the only way of soothing the Icelanders before they make their next big leap.
It is ridiculous to believe that the EU would take away Iceland’s fish, says Andres Petursson who lobbies for EU membership.
“The Union has never taken away the natural resources of a member state, not the Finnish forests or British oil,” says Mr Petursson.
Actually:
1) EU will not give Iceland fast-track entry unless Iceland completely concedes to the foreign creditors, which means paying off all the foreign bondholders (with money Iceland doesn’t have), eliminating all currency restrictions, abandoning the new bank-old bank scheme and giving everything to the creditors.
2) EU will not give Commissioner for Fisheries to Iceland, what drug is Ossur S. taking?
3) EU can and will take away the fish. The difference between the British oil and Finnish forests is that some right-wing criminals did not steal the quota, collaterize and securitize the natural resources and sell them off to foreigners and then send the money off to secret accounts in the Caymans.