00:03Iceland's EU hopes are over.
00:0652.8% voted no in a referendum on resuming membership negotiations with Brussels.
00:12The campaign was fierce and also marked by false or inaccurate claims.
00:17One of them involved the referendum's main sticking point, fisheries.
00:22A few media outlets reported on talks to broker a special exemption for Iceland
00:27from the EU's common fisheries policy, but the country's foreign affairs minister Katrin Gunnarsdottir
00:33denied those claims, which prompted the press to admit that the story had been largely misreported.
00:40Yet it touched a sensitive nerve.
00:43Control over fishing grounds is fiercely guarded in Iceland
00:46and joining the EU would likely mean giving up part of its quota.
00:51So first of all, I mean, Iceland didn't get to negotiate fisheries and agriculture in 2009 either.
00:56in its first negotiation, the EU and Iceland never actually got to those chapters,
01:02which is concerning because, I mean, those are the really big, important chapters for Iceland.
01:07So, you know, Iceland has about 4% of its total workforce works in fisheries.
01:15It's responsible for about a bit more than 8% of Iceland's GDP.
01:20So fisheries have a lot of economic and as well political weight.
01:23And when it comes to the cost of accessing the EU, opposing camps cited drastically different numbers.
01:30The no front set the figure as high as 1 billion euros a year,
01:34while prominent pro-EU figures said it would be just over 50 million euros.
01:39The pro-EU front seems much closer to the truth here,
01:43according to a study by the independent think tank Evropus Traumar,
01:47which claimed Iceland's net EU membership cost would be around 60 million euros a year.
Commenti