Voting ended at 10 p.m. local time on Saturday, with nearly 400,000 Icelanders eligible to take part. Preliminary results are expected early Sunday, according to Iceland’s public broadcaster RUV, Anadolu Agency reported.
The referendum does not determine whether Iceland will ultimately join the EU. Instead, voters are being asked whether the government should receive a mandate to resume membership negotiations with Brussels.
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A “Yes” result would allow accession talks to restart, but any eventual membership agreement would have to be put to Icelandic voters in a separate referendum.
The campaign has focused heavily on issues including the cost of living, national security, sovereignty and control over Iceland’s valuable fisheries.
Polling stations opened as early as 9 a.m., although closing times varied across the country, allowing voting to continue into the evening.
The vote revives a debate that has been dormant for more than a decade.
Iceland applied for EU membership in 2009, following the collapse of its banking system during the global financial crisis. Formal accession negotiations began in 2010 but were suspended three years later after a Eurosceptic government came to power.
In 2015, Iceland formally informed the EU that it no longer wanted to be considered a candidate for membership.
The European Commission has maintained that Iceland’s original membership application remains legally valid, meaning negotiations could potentially resume rather than requiring the country to submit an entirely new application, according to the European Policy Centre.
The referendum therefore represents an important test of whether Icelanders are prepared to reopen a question that has remained politically divisive since the country first sought EU membership.
A vote in favour would not guarantee Iceland’s entry into the bloc, but it could mark the first major step towards restarting negotiations and eventually putting EU membership itself to a nationwide vote.
