“It [withdrawal of EU bid] will be highly contested and all the opposition is united and demanded a special meeting of the parliament,” Ossur Skarphedinsson told Sputnik.
On Thursday, Iceland’s Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson said that he had informed Latvia, the current EU president, and the European Commission that Iceland is no longer interested in pursuing EU membership.
Ossur Skarphedinsson said that the country’s opposition, including the Social-Democratic Alliance, the Left-Greens, the Pirate Party and Bright Future opposes the move and will not let it through parliament.
The opposition maintains that the Icelandic government’s decision is unconstitutional and that the government is breaking the law, as the move should be approved by parliament before it goes any further.
“In our view this is not possible according to the constitution and to the law unless parliament agrees to do that. Parliament did not at any stage consent to this,” Skarphedinsson told Sputnik.
Ossur Skarphedinsson headed Iceland’s Foreign Ministry at the time when the EU application was submitted in 2009. Following the new government’s attempt to withdraw the application in 2013, which sparked public protests, it was agreed that it was absolutely necessary to hold a referendum on the application’s status.
