Icelanders voted against resuming negotiations on joining the European Union, officials said Sunday, after an unusually divisive debate ripped through the Nordic nation of 400,000.
The “no” side received 52.8 percent of the vote in a national referendum held on the issue, according to results announced on Sunday by the national election authorities. Some 82.6 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the referendum on Saturday, they said.
RUV, the national broadcaster, said it had been the highest voter turnout in any Icelandic election since 2009.
The decision was a setback for the 27-member European Union, which has been pitching itself as a progressive and pragmatic alliance in an increasingly uncertain world. With Iceland, the bloc would have expanded its presence in the Arctic with a wealthy nation.
“Iceland remains one of the E.U.’s closest and most trusted partners,” a spokesperson for António Costa, the president of the European Council, said in a statement, adding that the bloc respected the result.
Even politicians who had pushed to reopen E.U. talks celebrated the referendum as a sign of Iceland’s healthy democracy.
