Should Iceland Join the European Union?

October 6, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I left Iceland this morning, where I spoke at a conference examining whether that island nation in the North Atlantic should join the European Union.

My speech focused on the European Union’s economic performance (which is anemic and on a downward trajectory) and my main takeaway is that joining the E.U. would be akin to booking a ticket on the Titanic.

After it hit the iceberg!

More specifically, the E.U. is almost surely destined to suffer a massive fiscal crisis and more responsible nations in the region will be expected to bail out the irresponsible countries such as France and Italy.

Not just “expected.” Both the European Commission and the European Central Bank already have violated their charters to prop up profligate governments, so the only unknown is the degree to which taxpayers in countries such as Estonia and Denmark will get pillaged.

And Iceland, if it decides to climb on the E.U.’s sinking ship.

To augment my views, I want to share a couple of slides from a presentation by Professor Ragnar Arnason, an economist from the University of Iceland.

Here’s his analysis regarding whether there would be a net economic benefit if Iceland joined the E.U.

As you can see, he is very skeptical.

He also had some slides examining national security arguments and social arguments.

In both cases, he explained that likely costs of E.U. membership would be much higher than likely benefits.

But here’s the most interesting part of his presentation.

As shown by this next slide, he makes the elementary – but insightful – observation that there is no downside to saying no today and seeing what happens in the future.

From this perspective, the strong case against joining the E.U. becomes a slam-dunk case.

For what it’s worth, I’ve written that E.U. membership may make sense for a poor nation from Eastern Europe (and the case is weak even for those countries).

For a relatively prosperous country like Iceland, E.U. membership would be a lot of pain and little if any gain.

P.S. If you want to enjoy some E.U.-themed humor, click here and here.

Islam in…Iceland?

Allah’s final frontier.

March 13, 2024 by Bruce Bawer

I’ve been writing about Islam in Europe for a quarter century, but I’ve never written a word about Islam in Iceland, and at one point I was naive enough to believe that I would never have to. Pretty much everywhere else you go in Western Europe these days, there’s at least a hint of an Islamic presence and hence, to at least some degree, a sense of being in the presence of a hostile and alien threat. It was never like that in Iceland. In no other Western European urban center have I ever felt as safe as I have in Reykjavik. It’s a clean, charming city of 120,000 in a remote island country of 370,000, and until recently virtually everybody there was Icelandic. It’s like one big family – except it’s not really that big. 

 

When I walked the streets, at any time of day or night, the sense of security was palpable; indeed, it was less like wandering around a city than like wandering through the comfortable (if chilly) rooms of a well-secured home. There are high-trust societies and there are low-trust societies; Iceland was as high-trust as you can imagine. And a big part of the reason for that was the extremely low level of immigration – especially Muslim immigration.  Well, that’s over. ....To Read More....

Is Iceland’s Present, America’s Future

By Constitution.com

By Ron Paul From the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

During the 2008 economic crisis, Iceland’s government froze offshore accounts held by foreign investors in that country’s currency, the krona. Recently, the government of Iceland announced it would unfreeze the accounts if the account holders paid a voluntary “departure tax,” which could be as high as 58 percent. Investors who choose not to pay the departure tax would have their investment “segregated” into special funds that only invest in CDs issued by Iceland’s central bank. These CDs are expected to only provide a rate of return of at most 0.5 percent a year. So investors in offshore accounts can thus choose between having their money directly seized via the departure tax or indirectly seized via the inflation tax.

Iceland’s freezing of offshore krona accounts was part of a “stabilization and recovery” program implemented under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which also provided Iceland with a $1 billion loan. So US taxpayers not only helped the IMF bail out Iceland’s government, they may have helped the IMF advise Iceland on how best to steal property from American investors!

The IMF’s role in Iceland’s seizure of the property of foreign investors shows the hypocrisy of IMF officials, who recently expressed concerns about the increasing support for protectionism supposedly exemplified by the Brexit vote. However, freezing of assets held by foreign investors is a particularly harmful form of protectionism, while Brexit was more about rejecting the European Union’s bureaucracy than rejecting free trade. Perhaps what the IMF and its supporters are really worried about is losing their power to use taxpayers’ money to force other countries to adopt IMF bureaucrats’ favored economic policies.

Iceland is not the only government to turn to a departure tax to raise revenue. Just last year, in order to raise revenue for federal transportation programs, Congress gave the IRS the power to revoke the passport of any American accused of owing more than $50,000 in back taxes.

As an increasingly desperate Congress looks for new ways to squeeze money out of the American people to fund the welfare-warfare state, it is likely that more Americans will have their liberties limited because the IRS accuses them of not paying their fair share of taxes. It also is likely that the Federal Reserve will follow the example of its counterpart in Iceland and devalue the holdings of anyone who dares to resist the IRS’s demands.

Those hoping that the presidential election will result in real changes are bound to be disappointed. While Donald Trump seems to appreciate how current Fed policies help the incumbent administration while harming the people, he does not appear to understand that the problem is not with certain Fed policies, but with the Fed’s very existence. While Mr. Trump does support tax cuts, he also supports increasing government spending on infrastructure at home, militarism abroad, protectionism, and an economic cold war with China.

Hillary Clinton has actually said it is inappropriate for candidates to criticize the Fed. Sectary Clinton has also called for massive increases in government spending and taxes. Hillary Clinton may be more hawkish than Donald Trump, since Mr. Trump has rejected Secretary Clinton’s calls for a new cold war with Russia.

Instead of looking to politicians to save us, those of us who understand the dangers of our current course must continue to spread the ideas of liberty among our fellow citizens. Politicians will only change course when a critical mass of people stops falling for the war party’s propaganda, stops demanding entitlements, and starts demanding liberty.