Icelanders will vote on Aug. 29 about whether to resume accession negotiations with the European Union. If the talks are renewed and concluded, membership itself would be put to voters in a second referendum.
For the first time in more than a decade, Iceland’s suspended accession process has returned to the center of national politics. Much of the debate has focused on fisheries, monetary policy and economic sovereignty. Yet another question deserves attention: What does it mean to seek membership in a union founded not only on a common market, but also on shared democratic principles?
That question first occurred to me while researching a book on the early history of Israel’s relations with the European integration project. In Israeli diplomatic telegrams from the 1950s, I found an unexpected exchange with Icelandic diplomats. Their enthusiasm for relations with the young Jewish state was striking.
The Icelanders saw cooperation with Israel as the natural course for two small democracies with strong social democratic traditions seeking partners in a changing Europe. Nothing in those documents suggested that Israel would one day become a source of profound political division in public life on the Nordic island nation. Reading them today, it is difficult not to notice how much has changed.
The accession referendum concerns more than Iceland’s European ambitions. Enlargement has never been merely an economic exercise. The Copenhagen criteria require candidate states to respect democracy, the rule of law, human rights and minority protection. These are not secondary conditions of membership, but foundations of the union itself.
Scholars have described the European Union as a “normative power,” a community whose influence derives partly from its ability to shape behavior through shared legal and democratic standards. Membership entails more than adopting E.U. law. It also requires adherence to religious freedom, equal treatment and opposition to discrimination.
Iceland is a robust and deeply rooted democracy with strong institutions and high public trust. Judaism is officially recognized, despite the country’s tiny Jewish community. Because Icelanders have had limited historical contact with Jews, the State of Israel often becomes the principal lens through which Jewish questions enter public debate.
One rare point of contact came through Dorrit Moussaieff, the Israeli-born businesswoman who served as Iceland’s first lady from 2003 to 2016. Older traditions are more complicated: Iceland’s celebrated Passion Hymns have been criticized for hostile depictions of Jews, illustrating how historical narratives can outlive the circumstances that produced them.
Campaigns to exclude Israel can reinforce the perception that the Jewish state is uniquely illegitimate.
The greater challenge today lies in contemporary political discourse. Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the regional conflicts that followed, criticism of Israeli policies in Iceland has at times expanded into campaigns for Israel’s economic and cultural isolation.
Democratic societies must remain free to debate settlements, settler violence, military operations, humanitarian policy and Palestinian statehood. The European Union itself frequently criticizes Israeli governments on these issues. The question is not whether such criticism is legitimate, but when it gives way to discriminatory exclusion.
That distinction matters because combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life are explicit E.U. commitments. The union recognizes that criticism of Israel comparable to criticism directed at any other country is not antisemitic. At the same time, democratic societies should ask whether Israel is being subjected to standards not applied elsewhere, or whether opposition to a particular government is becoming an effort to isolate the world’s only Jewish state as such.
Iceland’s recurring boycott initiatives illustrate the dilemma.
In 2015, Reykjavík’s City Council voted to boycott Israeli goods, then withdrew the resolution within days after domestic and international criticism. Other campaigns have sought to exclude Israel’s public broadcaster from the Eurovision Song Contest, while calls for wider boycotts have intensified since October 2023. These initiatives are not identical. Together, however, they raise a recurring question: Is the target a particular policy, or is Israel itself being treated as unworthy of ordinary cultural, academic and economic relations?
E.U. membership is not merely symbolic. The Union maintains an extensive Association Agreement with Israel and broad cooperation in trade, research, innovation and higher education. Member states remain free to criticize Israeli governments and support measures adopted through established E.U. procedures. Blanket unilateral boycotts, however, raise thorny questions about consistency with the Union’s common framework.
The implications extend beyond foreign policy. While Icelandic Jewish communities are small and largely invisible, campaigns to exclude Israel can reinforce the perception that the Jewish state occupies a uniquely illegitimate place in public life. Not every criticism of Israel is antisemitic, but neither should every campaign against Israel be presumed immune from scrutiny merely because it is framed in the language of human rights.
The August referendum does not ask Icelanders to approve E.U. membership, but whether to reopen the path toward it. That path requires more than adopting directives or participating in the single market. It also requires a visible commitment to combating discrimination, protecting minority life and applying standards consistently. Rejecting blanket exclusion would not restrict legitimate criticism of Israeli governments. It would reinforce the equal treatment that European integration claims to embody.
The Icelandic diplomats whose telegrams I read in the archives assumed that cooperation between Israel and Europe was self-evident. Seven decades later, Iceland’s referendum asks a different question. Not whether Europe and Israel will always agree, but whether Europe still possesses the confidence to distinguish between legitimate criticism and discriminatory exclusion. That may ultimately be the real test of a union built on shared values.
