Icelanders vote in tight referendum on restarting EU accession talks

Voters in the tiny Nordic nation of Iceland cast their ballots on Saturday on whether to restart talks on the country joining the European Union.

Polls closed at 10:00 p.m. local time and early results indicate an extremely tight race, according to RÚV, Iceland's broadcaster. Hours after the last votes were cast, the "yes" camp was narrowly leading, it reported.

This is not the first time Iceland has considered joining the EU. The government was in talks with the EU back in 2013. Iceland had just come out of a banking collapse after the global economic crisis. Talks stalled in part because Icelanders worried they would lose sovereign control over their fisheries, their largest export.

If the "yes" vote wins, the country does not automatically become a member of the EU. Negotiations would reopen with Brussels, and if an agreement is reached, there would be a second referendum on whether Iceland should join the economic pact.

"This is a good day," Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir told a reporter Saturday, outside a polling station in the capital of Reykjavik. "We have now reached the point where this is in the hands of the nation. Either we enter these negotiations, seek a good agreement and then see what happens, or we put the discussion about the European Union aside, at least for the time being."

Frostadóttir has led a pro-EU coalition government since late 2024. In an interview in July with The Rest is Politics, a leading British podcast, she said the country already adheres to 75% of the EU rules. "Joining it is not going to sink the country and joining it is also not fundamentally going to change every aspect of Icelandic, you know, economy," said the prime minister.

But many in the country with a population of just 400,000 worry they'll be drowned out by the 27 other nations in the economic pact. There is concern that if Iceland becomes part of the EU, in addition to fishing limits, it would have to change its currency, the Icelandic króna, to the euro and join a single market.