{"text":[[{"start":7.24,"text":"It would be tempting to dismiss it as too small to matter: Iceland has just 400,000 inhabitants, and its referendum was not even about EU membership, just about whether to pick up long-suspended talks."}],[{"start":20.46,"text":"But for the EU, it was no trivial embarrassment that a narrow majority of Icelanders turned down their government’s invitation to give the bloc another look. Rather than moving quickly on, the EU would do well to think about what it should do differently."}],[{"start":35.74,"text":"The vote is a setback for the EU and its ability to be a pole of attraction in an unstable world. Geopolitical turmoil could not persuade a majority of Icelanders even to explore what the bloc’s 450mn inhabitants might be able to offer them. The rejection is also a blow to the EU’s ambitions for influence in the Arctic."}],[{"start":56.52,"text":"While its interests in the high north are clear — from security to climate concerns to energy — it has no coastal or marine Arctic territory. Icelandic or Norwegian membership would change that (as would Greenland’s return to the EU, which it left in 1985)."}],[{"start":73.02,"text":"In Norway, Iceland’s “no” makes things marginally harder for supporters of EU membership there. It would have mattered more, however, if the referendum had gone the other way, prompting the question of whether it would make sense for Norway to explore EU membership alongside a neighbour with parallel interests."}],[{"start":90.14,"text":"The result is a striking geopolitical asymmetry. The EU is in a deep and difficult but well-defined enlargement process with troubled countries on its south-eastern flank."}],[{"start":100.8,"text":"At the same time it has largely unproblematic relations with an arc of prosperous, like-minded and stable nations to its north and west, from Norway to Canada — but with no vision for how those ties should evolve."}],[{"start":114.58,"text":"Many observers interpret the Iceland result as a triumph for the existing European Economic Area, the agreement through which Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein take part in the EU’s single market and adopt its rules. Iceland’s own prime minister notably concluded that Icelanders are happy with the EEA."}],[{"start":132.74,"text":"The EU, some suggest, should similarly conclude that tight economic integration without political integration is the right permanent model for its relations to the north-west."}],[{"start":142.52,"text":"That could mean leaving well enough alone — accepting that current relations don’t need to be improved. More ambitiously, it could mean looking at the EEA as something to build on in scope, and perhaps use as a template for other countries."}],[{"start":156.6,"text":"But that way lies a risk of complacency. The EEA has many anomalies, beyond the inherent one that it formally obliges rich, democratic countries to permanently adopt new laws made elsewhere. (This is why neither the UK nor Switzerland considers acceding to it.)"}],[{"start":174.46,"text":"It is also extremely lopsided: the 27 countries of the EU set the rules for three small economies in the European Free Trade Association, which non-EU states must be part of to join the EEA. That means that Efta bizarrely acts as a gatekeeper to the EU’s single market."}],[{"start":192.26,"text":"From the EU’s point of view, why should this small organisation be the portal to the closest integration (short of membership) that the bloc has to offer? If something like the EEA does indeed become a model for more countries, why should they and the EU need to go via Efta?"}],[{"start":208.3,"text":"Then there is the political question of whether the EEA has been “too good” — by affording Icelanders and Norwegians a more than tolerable status quo, essentially freeriding on the political work of making the single market possible. If so, the EU should consider whether it wants a more demanding form of integration in return for single market membership."}],[{"start":228.56,"text":"All these questions could be skirted for as long as economic integration was largely uncontroversial and unconnected to security and geopolitics, and the EEA itself brought only minor irritants to either side. They no longer can. Efta members have already sought any number of additional agreements with the EU (such as Schengen passport-free travel), demonstrating that the existing framework is too limited."}],[{"start":252.3,"text":"That is not sustainable. The EU is changing faster than ever before. The need for EEA countries to follow suit will make the structure creak ever louder at the joints. To be fit for the future, let alone a template for new relationships, the EEA needs a deep and strategically informed review."}],[{"start":270.42,"text":"Icelanders and others might find it necessary to revisit past decisions sooner than they expect."}],[{"start":276.06,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1788748295_3874.mp3"}