What’s A Fair Price For A Common Resource?

The Grapevine tells you what the fuck a fisheries resource rent is

When the current coalition government assumed office in early 2025, one of its first published agenda items involved increased infrastructure investments. As everyone knows, in order to have nice things, someone needs to pay for them.

At a subsequent government press conference where party leaders debuted the cabinet, Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir announced reform to the current fisheries resource rent (veiðigjöld). The statement led to many a pundit ask themselves, “What the fuck is a fisheries resource rent?” With a bill currently circulating in Alþingi, the question reverberated around the island: “WHAT THE FUCK IS A FISHERIES RESOURCE RENT?”

Essentially, a fisheries resource rent is a type of fishing fee imposed on all marine catch that’s landed. Every registered owner of an Icelandic fishing vessel has to pay a specific amount for each kilogram of fish they bring onto shore. There, now stop your screaming, you barbarian.

Why is this interesting?

This is, in and of itself, not particularly interesting. After all, based on the premise that fish within a country’s economic zone are a shared natural resource, one can easily surmise that every citizen should be able to profit from it.

For the regular Joe, any changes to such an obscure taxation aren’t notable enough to register any particular emotion. The big fishing magnates, however, got angry.

In late March, Industry and Finance Ministers Hanna Katrín Friðriksson and Daði Már Kristófersson, respectively, announced the parliamentary bill introducing changes to the fishing rent. Among other things, their rhetoric was based on changing the fees so they resemble the actual market value of fish. According to the calculations, revised legislation would double the amount fishing fees bring into state coffers, about 18-20 billion ISK (approx. 140 million EUR). Minister Hanna Katrín described the updates as returning, “a more just and normal rent” to the nation for the use of a common resource.

Those impacted the most by the changes would be Iceland’s largest fisheries.

Fat cats gone fishing

Immediately after the announcement, lobby group Fisheries Iceland (Samtök Fyrirtækja í Sjávarútvegi, SFS) claimed that the legislation would “severely damage” the industry. Moreover, its spokespeople said that the legislation’s implementation and its effects are, “more detrimental to society than any other idea presented.” SFS’s main argument involved a common faux pas in tax reform discussions, claiming that higher resource rent would lead to fisheries fleeing Iceland in favour of places with cheaper overhead.

SFS’s concerns reached their peak when they paid for and distributed a controversial advert depicting two fat cat Norwegians — straight out of the financial drama series Exit — admonishing the changes to the Icelandic fishing fees.

Needless to say, no one liked it, with various pundits perceiving it as obvious propaganda which demonstrated SFS’s interests better than any journalist could.

And one by one, CEOs of various fisheries stepped out to claim that the changes would undermine the very fabric of Iceland’s economic motor.

Approved by the public

Generally, these objections have felt hollow, not least because of the fact that during the past two decades, the large fisheries companies have enjoyed incredible profits, well above other industries in Iceland. These profits have led many of the companies to heavily invest in totally unrelated business ventures, both domestically and internationally, thereby exponentially hoarding more wealth.

When it came to public opinion, a Maskína survey published in April showed that a little under two-thirds were in favour of the legislative changes. Interestingly, Independence Party voters were most likely to oppose them. In another survey conducted by Gallup, almost 80% of the public believed that the industry could afford to pay a higher fee, one that more closely resembles the actual value of the resource.

But somehow, opponents to any changes to the status quo seem to align themselves with one particular political party: the Independence Party, which has historically served the longest time in government, and has vested interests in protecting the fishing elite.

When the bill entered Alþingi for its first discussion in early May, opponents of the legislation went as far as setting a new record for filibustering (ironically, the MPs in question are backed by voters who are the first to tell you how useless politicians are).

Given the general popularity of the law, these politicians are perhaps banking on nobody remembering their filibustering four years from now, except for the fishing interests themselves, who tend to have a better long-term memory than voters.

With its first legislative discussion over, the bill has entered the abyss of committee review. It remains to be seen whether or not it will make it past Alþingi this year.

Read the May 23rd cover feature on the biggest bribery scandal in Icelandic history here.