标签： Europe

On a small North Atlantic island with a population of just under 400,000, Icelanders are heading to the polls this Saturday to settle one of the most consequential and long-running debates in their modern history: whether to restart frozen negotiations to join the European Union. Latest polling shows the race is a statistical dead heat, with neither side holding a decisive lead, making the final outcome impossible to call with any certainty.

Inside a sunlit waterfront fish processing plant outside Reykjavik, workers in hairnets and heavy blue overalls sort through freshly caught cod and haddock, with most of the finished fillets destined for European markets. For Pétur Pálsson, head of the Visir fishing firm, the threat of EU membership hangs heavy over his operation. He warns that joining the bloc would mean ceding control of Iceland’s lucrative fishing waters to Brussels policymakers, risking thousands of domestic jobs and pushing processing facilities overseas. “If we are in the EU, they will be the ones who make the policy,” Pálsson says.

The push for a new referendum comes after Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir’s centre-left government won a snap 2024 election on a pledge to revisit the EU question by 2027. That timeline was accelerated dramatically by shifting global geopolitics: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has sharpened great power rivalries in the Arctic, while unpredictable trade policy from former U.S. President Donald Trump, including tariff threats and repeated public remarks about his desire to acquire Greenland, has pushed the question of Iceland’s global standing to the top of the national agenda.

“Things have been moving very rapidly with respect to geopolitical challenges,” Finance Minister Daði Már Kristófersson, whose Liberal Reform Party leads the pro-accession campaign, told the BBC. “That has pushed Iceland’s place in the world up the agenda.” Iceland occupies a strategically critical position at the mouth of the GIUK Gap, a key North Atlantic shipping and surveillance corridor where Western militaries closely monitor Russian maritime activity. A founding member of NATO, Iceland has no standing military of its own, relying instead on a 1951 bilateral defense pact with the U.S. and collective security commitments from its NATO allies.

Polling has shifted dramatically in the lead-up to the vote: one recent survey put the Yes camp ahead by a slim 51.3% to 48.7% margin, while earlier polls showed the two sides deadlocked. “It’s impossibly hard to predict,” said Eirikur Bergmann, a professor of politics at Bifröst University. “Both camps are throwing everything they have at it.” For supporters, the case for EU membership rests on two core pillars: security and economic stability. Kristófersson argues that joining the bloc would strengthen Iceland’s position against competing great powers, while adopting the euro would tame the country’s notoriously volatile currency and curb sky-high living costs that have left many struggling. “We see the opportunity of joining the EU and adopting the euro as a very significant benefit to Icelandic companies and to the Icelandic general public,” he says.

A Yes vote this weekend will only restart negotiations with Brussels: any final membership deal would require a second national referendum and approval from all 27 existing EU member states. A No vote would shelve the accession question for the foreseeable future. Many voters planning to back Yes say they support restarting talks precisely because the final decision remains down the line. “We have to know what’s in the package from the EU,” said Reykjavik resident Anna Ragnarsdottir. “If we say no, we won’t ever know.”

The biggest sticking point, both when Iceland first began accession talks in 2010 and today, is fishing. Marine industries account for nearly 40% of Iceland’s total exports, and the country’s fishing waters are woven into its national identity and political culture. Opponents warn that joining the EU would force Iceland to share access to its waters under the bloc’s Common Fisheries Policy, eroding national sovereignty and threatening the core of the country’s economy. Opposition leader Guðrún Hafsteinsdóttir, who leads the No campaign, has vowed that Iceland’s waters will never be opened to foreign fleets. Prof Bergmann notes that no Icelandic politician could survive making such a concession: “Fishing is inseparable from Iceland’s culture and political identity, and no politician ever could make that concession. They’d be expelled from the country.”

The No campaign’s slogan, “Iceland for sale? No thanks,” has resonated with voters who prioritize protecting national control over key industries. Margrét Ágústa Sigurðardóttir, head of the Icelandic Farmers’ Association, is skeptical of the government’s promise to secure a special exemption for Iceland’s fishing and agricultural sectors. “No member state has been granted a permanent opt-out,” she says, arguing that EU policy would always prioritize the interests of 450 million EU consumers over the unique needs of a small 400,000-person nation.

Iceland’s government argues that a special arrangement is achievable, pointing to precedent: Norway secured favorable terms even before it abandoned its own accession bid, while existing EU members Finland and Sweden won carve-outs for northern agricultural sectors. But economic concerns remain top of mind for most voters, regardless of their position: Iceland ranks among the most expensive countries in the world, with recent analysis showing prices are 84% higher than the EU average, and interest rates have climbed to 8% to curb persistent inflation. “We get higher salaries, and it goes straight to the cost of everything,” said Snærós Sindradóttir, a leading Yes supporter with the European Movement in Iceland. “It’s like a dog chasing its own tail constantly.”

Ironically, while the referendum was called largely because of shifting security concerns, geopolitics has barely featured in public debate. For Sindradóttir, that omission is deeply frustrating: the referendum is happening now “100% because of security matters,” she says. Recent events have heightened security anxieties: in June, Icelandic authorities tracked a Russian intelligence ship passing through the country’s exclusive economic zone, and Trump’s repeated gaffes — including mistaking Iceland for Greenland during a Davos speech, and a joke from his ambassador that Iceland could become the 51st U.S. state — have left many Icelanders questioning the long-term reliability of their security alliance with the U.S. While the “special relationship” remains formally unchanged, Kristófersson argues that EU membership adds a critical additional pillar of security, a position that led the government to sign a new defense partnership with the bloc in March.

On the streets of downtown Reykjavik, voters are split between economic anxiety and concerns over sovereignty. “The biggest problem right now is for the generation who are trying to buy their own housing,” said 62-year-old Adolf Fridriksson. “The mortgage rates are terrifying.” For 22-year-old Helga, the cost of membership and loss of control are too great a risk: “The fishing industry, and everything else, should be in our control.”

The result will be closely watched across Europe. When Iceland abandoned accession talks in 2013, 11 of the 35 negotiation chapters were already completed, meaning a Yes vote could restart talks in months rather than years. The outcome is also being closely monitored in neighboring Norway, another Eurosceptic EEA member where support for EU accession is growing. For Hallgrímur Oddsson, head of EU-Iceland think tank European Currents, a Yes vote would be a much-needed boost for the EU’s stalled enlargement agenda. “But a No vote could also be perceived as a loss,” he says.

TORONTO – In a clear demonstration of Canada’s strategic shift away from heavy economic reliance on the United States amid an escalating bilateral trade conflict, Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to address the European Parliament next month, his office confirmed in an official announcement Wednesday. The high-stakes diplomatic visit will also see Carney attend the European Union’s annual State of the Union address, delivered by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is scheduled to give her address on September 16. Carney’s speech to European lawmakers will follow one day after von der Leyen’s remarks.

This landmark trip comes on the heels of collapsed trade negotiations between Washington and Ottawa, a breakdown that pushed US President Donald Trump to enact steep 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian exports. In direct response to the unilateral American trade action, the Canadian government quickly moved forward with retaliatory tariffs of its own, deepening the rift between the two neighboring North American allies.

For the Carney administration, Europe has emerged as the cornerstone of a long-term strategy to diversify Canada’s trade and foreign policy partnerships, cutting the country’s overreliance on its southern neighbor. Since taking office in March 2025, Carney has prioritized European engagement, making no fewer than 11 trips to the continent to advance bilateral cooperation. He has repeatedly laid out his vision for global cooperation among middle powers, arguing that these nations should collaborate directly rather than jockey for influence with larger global powers.

Beyond trade, Canada has steadily deepened political and security ties with the European bloc over recent months. The country secured a landmark security and defense partnership with the EU, and earlier this year became the first non-European nation to join the bloc’s Security Action for Europe initiative, a signal of growing alignment on regional and global security priorities.

Carney has set an ambitious economic target to back this strategic shift: doubling the volume of Canada’s exports to markets outside the United States over the next ten years. The prime minister brings personal and professional context to this European outreach, having previously served as governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, giving him longstanding, deep-rooted professional and personal connections across European institutions.

KYIV, Ukraine – In a striking moment that blends soft cultural diplomacy, wartime symbolism, and ongoing geopolitical tensions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a three-month-old American pit bull terrier this week from legendary U.S. former boxing champion Terence Crawford, a gift layered with meaning that extends far beyond a casual photo opportunity. The tender video footage, captured Tuesday inside Zelenskyy’s Kyiv office, shows the Ukrainian leader cuddling, cooing over, and cradling the floppy, reddish-yellow puppy named Freya – a gentle scene that unfolds against the harsh backdrop of Ukraine’s four-year defensive war against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Crawford, a long-time public supporter of Ukraine and an enthusiast of the American pit bull terrier breed, arranged the gifting through a chain of connections that traces directly back to one of the war’s worst atrocities. Freya is the granddaughter of Athos, a dog who survived the 2022 Russian siege of Bucha, where Russian forces carried out mass civilian killings before being pushed out by Ukrainian troops. After surviving the siege on a street where Ukrainian forces destroyed a major Russian military convoy, Athos was eventually rescued and transferred to Francisco Lopez, a professional American dog breeder and Ukraine supporter who is a friend of Crawford’s. When Athos’ daughter remained in Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict, Lopez arranged to fly a breeding dog to Ukraine to mate with her, resulting in Freya’s birth.

The puppy’s name carries intentional strategic resonance as well: it is taken from Project Freyja, a Ukrainian-led initiative to develop a new pan-European ballistic missile defense system, launched amid growing shortages of critical American-made Patriot air defense interceptors. Supplies of Patriots have grown increasingly stretched amid concurrent conflict demands in the Middle East, and recent remarks from former U.S. President Donald Trump have cast new uncertainty over U.S. commitments to sharing Patriot production licensing with Ukraine.

Vadym Danylchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of youth and sports who helped coordinate the visit, told the Associated Press that Crawford specifically requested that Zelenskyy receive this particular puppy. Danylchenko noted that while he initially had reservations about gifting the president a new pet amid the overwhelming demands of wartime leadership, the symbolic weight of the gesture made it unavoidable. “This little girl is a symbol of the fact that her grandfather survived and was a direct witness to the events in Bucha. So it was very symbolic for them,” Danylchenko explained.

The moment of soft warmth in Zelenskyy’s office is far from an accidental photo op: it is the latest entry in a parallel public battle of imagery that runs alongside Ukraine’s military campaign against Russian aggression, with animals long emerging as powerful symbols of Ukrainian national resilience and endurance through hardship. This trend stretches back to the early months of the full-scale invasion, when a Jack Russell terrier named Patrone rose to national fame for his work assisting Ukrainian mine-clearing teams in the Chernihiv region. Patrone became the official mascot of Ukraine’s emergency services, earned a state medal from Zelenskyy, and was even named the first ever UNICEF “Goodwill AmbassaDOG,” with a mural in a Kyiv park immortalizing his service.

Other examples of animals as wartime symbols are woven across Ukraine’s public landscape: a Kyiv mural depicts fallen volunteer fighter Oleksii Movchan holding the grey-and-white cat he rescued alongside 11 civilians in Donetsk region, shortly before Movchan and three fellow soldiers were killed by Russian shelling in 2022. Countless stories have also emerged of Ukrainian civilians risking their own safety to rescue pets and stray animals trapped in war zones, with one woman organizing the evacuation of hundreds of animals to safer territory in western Ukraine and foster homes overseas.

The gesture also carries subtle geopolitical weight, coming at a moment of ongoing uncertainty over long-term U.S. military and political support for Ukraine. Last year, Zelenskyy received a high-profile public rebuke from Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance during a meeting in the Oval Office, though the two sides have since sought to frame relations as mended. On Tuesday, the gift of an American dog breed from a beloved American sports figure offered a quiet display of ongoing public support from across the Atlantic, even as official policy commitments remain in flux.

For a few minutes on Tuesday, the heavy burdens of war, geopolitical negotiation, and global politics gave way to the quiet charm of a puppy curling up in the president’s arms, her white-tipped paws dangling as she relaxed against his chest. The happy, gentle scene may seem unconnected to the brutal fighting across eastern and southern Ukraine, but for Ukraine, it carries a layered message: that even amid four years of invasion, life persists, resilience is passed from one generation to the next, and symbols of survival can hold as much power in the global information war as weapons do on the battlefield.

LONDON – Britain’s King Charles III is set to embark on a high-profile autumn tour of three Caribbean nations this October and November, ahead of his attendance at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to open on November 1 in St. John’s, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda. Buckingham Palace has confirmed the royal trip will kick off on October 27 in the Bahamas, one of 14 sovereign nations outside the United Kingdom that still recognizes Charles as their ceremonial head of state.

Following his stop in the Bahamas, the monarch will travel onward to the South American nation of Guyana for an official state visit. The trip coincides with a key milestone: 2026 marks six decades of formal bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Guyana, a former British colony on the continent’s northern coast. Guyana first gained self-governing dominion status within the Commonwealth in 1966, before transitioning to a fully independent republic in 1970, while retaining its membership in the association.

As the ceremonial head of the Commonwealth, Charles oversees a bloc of 56 independent nations that share largely historical ties to the former British Empire. The organization spans every major continent, counting global economic heavyweights such as Australia, Canada, and India among its ranks, alongside dozens of small island and developing states including the South Pacific’s Tuvalu and the three Caribbean destinations on the king’s upcoming itinerary.

CHOGM, the association’s flagship gathering, is convened every two years to bring together heads of government from across member states. Attendees use the summit to negotiate joint responses to shared cross-border challenges, deepen economic and political cooperation between member nations, and advance collective initiatives to drive sustainable development across the bloc’s mostly low and middle-income member countries.

In a rare and closely guarded development that has drawn international attention, the Kremlin confirmed Wednesday that CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow for closed-door talks with senior Russian intelligence officials — a meeting that comes at a moment of unprecedented tension between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Ratcliffe did not hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, though the country’s leader was promptly briefed on the intelligence-level discussions. “Of course, President Putin is immediately informed of everything,” Peskov added, declining to disclose any details about the topics covered in the closed talks. Both the CIA and the White House have declined to issue any formal comment on the visit to date.

Independent confirmation of the trip emerged earlier, when Russian state news outlets reported that a U.S. military aircraft touched down at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on Tuesday, departing the same day after a short stay. A senior Ukrainian official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking publicly about diplomatic matters, confirmed that Washington notified Kyiv ahead of the U.S. delegation’s trip to the Russian capital and requested a temporary suspension of Ukrainian long-range strikes on specific regions until the delegation departed. The request exclusively applied to Moscow, St. Petersburg and parts of northern Russia, the official added, noting that strikes on other areas of Russian territory continued as planned during the visit.

The visit was first reported by CBS News, and experts note that such high-level, in-person intelligence meetings between the two nuclear powers are extremely uncommon. Peskov acknowledged that even amid sharply deteriorated relations, low-key contacts between the two countries’ intelligence communities carry some inherent value. “Contacts between intelligence agencies are, in and of themselves, a positive phenomenon, a positive process,” he said, but quickly stressed that the broader bilateral relationship between Russia and the United States remains mired in a “profound crisis.” When asked what long-term impact Ratcliffe’s visit could have on bilateral ties, Peskov noted it is still “too early to say.”

Andrei Soldatov, an independent analyst specializing in Russian security services, told the AP that high-level visits of this kind do not “happen every year.” He explained that formal communication channels between Moscow and Washington have remained intact since the 1980s, designed explicitly to facilitate dialogue when critical threats to American or Russian citizens emerge, or other urgent national security matters require direct discussion. This is not the first high-level intelligence meeting between the two powers in recent years: in 2021, months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, then-CIA Director William Burns met Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Putin’s Security Council, in Moscow. Burns later held talks with Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, in Turkey in November 2022, where he delivered a formal U.S. warning against any deployment of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Soldatov explained that, given the lack of public details about Tuesday’s discussion, such meetings are only convened when a pressing national security matter aligned with “American national interests” is on the table. Current geopolitical context suggests the talks likely touched on evolving tensions in the Middle East, where Russia maintains complex diplomatic relationships with both Iran and Israel. Since the outbreak of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, Moscow has positioned itself as a potential mediator between the warring parties, even as it deepens its own strategic partnership with Tehran.

Relations between Russia and the U.S. plunged to Cold War-era lows immediately after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Tensions briefly softened following the return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, as Trump made a campaign promise to end the Ukraine war quickly, held multiple phone calls with Putin, and even hosted the Russian leader for talks in Alaska one year ago. Those early peace negotiation efforts have since stalled, however, as U.S. foreign policy focus has shifted to its conflict with Iran, and both Moscow and Kyiv have ramped up long-range strikes on each other’s territory. Putin has repeatedly rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for an immediate temporary ceasefire, arguing that Russia will only accept a long-term comprehensive settlement to end the conflict.

Moscow and Tehran formalized their deepening alignment in January 2025, when the two countries signed a landmark comprehensive strategic partnership treaty. The agreement followed years of growing military cooperation: after Russia launched its Ukraine invasion, Iran provided Moscow with Shahed combat drones, and later permitted domestic production of the systems in Russia. Despite its close ties to Tehran, Russia has maintained long-standing friendly relations with Israel, leaving Moscow to navigate a complex and often challenging balancing act in the region.

In March, the AP reported that U.S. intelligence assessments found Russia had shared intelligence with Iran that could be used to target American warships, aircraft and other military assets in the Middle East, according to two unnamed U.S. officials. The officials cautioned that U.S. intelligence has not found evidence that Russian officials are directing Iranian actions or telling Tehran how to use the shared information. When asked at the time whether Russia would expand beyond political support for Iran to provide direct military assistance, Peskov said Moscow had not received any such request from Tehran, and declined to comment on whether any military or intelligence sharing had already taken place.

Soldatov said the most likely agenda for Ratcliffe’s secret Moscow meeting includes discussions of protecting U.S. military personnel, bases and facilities in the Middle East that have been targeted by Iranian forces. It is also possible that the U.S. delegation traveled to Moscow to push Russian leaders to reconsider their growing intelligence and military cooperation with Tehran, he added.