1/04/2006

One more sign...

One more sign of how the European Union is so not an issue in Iceland and is actually always becoming more and more a none-issue here. As a tradition the chairmen of the Icelandic political parties represented in the Icelandic parliament, the Althing, each write a detailed article in the Icelandic newspaper Morgunblaðið on December 31 about the politics in Iceland in the last year. Only two of them so much as mentioned the EU. Geir H. Haarde, chairman of the Independence Party, only mentioned it once and then only in context with the WTO's Doha agenda. Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, chairman of the Socialdemocratic Alliance (the only Icelandic political party in favour of joining the EU although it has never dared to put the issue on its agenda), however, mentioned it a few times mainly complaining that there was no political will in Iceland to join the EU. She even went as far as insisting that the EU was something that could not be mentioned in the country. Well, this is not really like that, but it is nevertheless true that the EU is not really the most popular thing among Icelanders ;)