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An MP for the Progressive Party believes accession talks between Iceland and the European Union should be formally ended, and sees no reason to put the matter up for public referendum.
Progressive MP Vigdís Hauksdóttir expressed her misgivings about the EU in an interview printed today in Fréttablaðið.
“It is far simpler that [the accession] application is withdrawn, because it was submitted for the wrong reasons,” she said in part. “It is the most natural course [to end the talks], also to make it perfectly clear that the process is formally over, and as the chairperson of Heimssýn, I will do everything in my power to see that things go in this direction.”
Heimssýn is a political organisation that is opposed to Iceland joining the EU.
Officially, talks with the EU are paused. “We’ve decided to take a break from those discussions,” Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson recently told CNBC.
The latest Gallup poll on the matter, taken last August, shows that most Icelanders support at least concluding EU negotiations, and then submitting the EU accession proposal for public referendum – even if most Icelanders are against joining the EU in general.
In a separate interview, also in Fréttablaðið, former Independence Party MP Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir said in part that she believes pausing accession talks was a mistake.
“I have faith in [Independence Party chairperson Bjarni Benediktson and the Prime Minister], although they made a huge mistake in stopping accession talks with the EU,” she said in part. “It was stupid, and not in the best interests of Iceland.”