“Would you like the EU to take the credit for our victories?” Does this video imply that we can claim victory if Germany, France or Spain wins the World Cup in July? Or that we can claim victory no matter who wins Eurovision? And does this mean that people in Spain take great pride in Norway’s [...]

The conclusion to a paper I wrote in a course in International Relations at the University of Iceland last semester. The title of the paper, Why has Iceland applied for EU membership? The time and the place of the Social Democrats Icelanders have participated in the European integration process without perhaps understanding the larger implications of it. [...]

This paper asks why Iceland had until July 2009 chosen to participate in the European project through the EEA and Schengen agreements but not with full membership in the EU. It analyses if and how ideas on the Icelandic nation and its sovereignty affects the stance Icelandic politicians have taken towards the European project. Icelanders’ struggle for independence in [...]

In honour of Heimssyn’s celebration of Iceland’s sovereignty to be held today at Salurinn in Kopavogur I wrote a message to our former friends in Europe who have now conspired to rip us off through the IceSave agreement, by enacting terrorist law against Iceland and wait to rob us of our resources. On the day when we [...]

For people from outside Iceland it is probably hard to understand the world Bjarni Benediktsson seems to live in. The chairman of the Independence Party who is normally afraid of speaking his mind under the watchful gaze of his predecessors says in an interview with Frettabladid today that he is pro-European. He claims that it is [...]

It is puzzling to an outsider that Iceland is already deeply integrated into European and other international treaties and organizations (including the European Economic Area, the Schengen border-control agreement, the Council of Europe [consisting of parliamentarians from more than forty European countries], NATO, the Nordic Council, the Arctic Council, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Trade Organization, and [...]

In every Nordic country the main sector has dictated whether the public votes yes or no on the EU. In Sweden and Finland the manufacturing sectors,  in Denmark the agriculture export industry and in Norway oil, fish and agriculture. Their access to politicians is such that the public does not stand a chance once their propaganda [...]

The questionnaire on information requested for the preperation of the Opinion on the application of Iceland for membership of the European Union. Questionnaire_-_ICELAND_(final).PDF Direct link to Foreign Ministry Website

The Foreign Ministry is getting close to completing the answers to the list of 2.500 questions posed by the EU in relation to the membership application. Why so quick? Long before getting one from the EU, the Icelandic government had scored the question lists that Bosnia Herzegovina and Montenegro had received for their own accession process. So [...]

Olli Rehn, the European Union´s Commissioner for Enlargement, will give a talk Wednesday September 9 at 10:30 am, on the European perspective of Iceland. Össur Skarphéðinsson, Minister for Foreign Affairs, will open the meeting and the moderator is Baldur Þórhallsson, Political Science Professor and Chair of the Institute of International Affairs. The seminar is held in [...]