Voters in Iceland give EU talks the cold shoulder

Iceland's Prime Minister Kristrun Frostadottir has said her government will "respect the result" after its citizens narrowly rejected reopening talks about their country joining the European Union in a referendum.

The North Atlantic island first applied to join the 27-member bloc in 2009, after it was rocked by a crisis in its banking industry. Discussions were halted four years later by a more euroskeptic government, although crucially, the application was not withdrawn.

The current center-left government backed a return to the negotiating table, citing the changing global geopolitical situation as one of the main reasons, but when it was put to the people of the country, 52.8 percent of them voted no, with 47.2 percent saying yes.

"It's obvious that close to half of the country wanted to continue these negotiations, but over half of the population did not," said Frostadottir. "We will respect that result."

Iceland is a member of the European Economic Area, which allows it to be part of the European single market without a say in how EU rules are set, and is also a founding member of the NATO military alliance. It has no standing army but, given its geographical location in the North Atlantic, is of key strategic importance for other members in terms of overseas deployment.

Frostadottir, who beforehand had said that a no vote would see the issue taken off the table for the rest of her current mandate, which ends in 2028, said the result showed that Icelanders were happy with the country's current relationship with the EU and its membership in the EEA, which she said the government would "continue to strengthen … that is the most important thing going forward".

One of the key factors in many people's thinking in the referendum is believed to have been the future of Iceland's fishing industry, one of its biggest export sectors, and how potential membership might impact who could fish in the country's territorial waters — a topic that has been politically contentious for decades.

Hallgrimur Oddsson, founder of the European think tank Evropustraumar, said that the no campaign had made its successful pitch purely on the issue of "Icelandic fisheries, and how they would fit into the (EU's) Common Fisheries Policy, where decisions are shared with 27 other countries".

Eirikur Bergmann, a professor of politics at Iceland's Bifrost University, told the BBC that the yes campaign had presented a more technical campaign, lacking in passion, while the no side "was much more skillful in sort of tapping into the political national identity in Iceland, which emphasizes formal independence … and so they were able to appeal to people's very fundamental feelings".

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