Text tabled : B7-0125/2012

  David Campbell Bannerman (ECR). - Mr President, I voted against Iceland joining the EU because I think, as two-thirds of Icelandic people thought in a poll just last month, that Iceland would be mad to join the EU.

Mad because membership would destroy Iceland’s key industry – fishing – through the disastrous common fisheries policy, just as it has destroyed 100 000 jobs in the UK in fishing and nearly all the fishing in my own constituency of the East of England. Mad because they would have to join the disastrous euro as well and abandon the free floating króna, which has brought a boom in exports. Mad, too, because its economy would be weighed down with a barrage of EU red tape. Its growth rate is currently 3.1%, whereas the EU’s GDP forecast is 0 for this year. Why risk it?

As for Icesave, there are other legal mechanisms outside the EU, such as the EFTA court, which has already ruled that Iceland must pay up.

So we must stop kidding ourselves in the EU that Iceland wants to join. Iceland’s sane option, as I believe Britain’s is too, is to stay proud, independent and self-governing.