Iceland PM Calls November Snap Vote as Coalition Disbanded

(Bloomberg) — Iceland’s Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson broke up his coalition government and called a snap election on the north Atlantic island for late November.
The move follows discontent that’s been building up for some time, Benediktsson told reporters on Sunday afternoon in Reykjavik. He plans to visit President Halla Tomasdottir on Monday and ask her to disband the parliament.
“Toward the fall, a rising disagreement between coalition parties started emerging,” he said, naming asylum seekers and energy policy as some areas of divergence. “My conclusion is that there is no likelihood that a conclusion will be reached on these major issues.”
Benediktsson’s center-right Independence Party has ruled with the Left Greens and centrist Progressive Party since 2017. The prime minister only took over in April when his predecessor Katrin Jakobsdottir decided to run for president in the June election, in which she placed second.
Opposition Social Democrats are currently leading the polls, indicating that power may shift in the Nordic nation. Benediktsson’s party has lost support in recent months, polling third, behind the opposition Center Party. The Left Greens are the least popular.
The election needs to take place no later than 45 days after the parliament has been dissolved, Benediktsson said. Iceland was due to hold its next general election by September 2025, although the Left Greens had been calling for a vote to be held in the spring.
The coalition’s first term culminated in the Covid-19 pandemic and voters rewarded their crisis management with by renewing their mandate in 2021. Since then, tensions have been building up over immigration policy, power generation and fisheries.
One matter that caused significant strain for the cabinet was a sudden whaling ban in 2023, imposed by Svandis Svavarsdottir, who was then minister of food and fisheries. The ban, which took other parties by surprise, was later found disproportionate and lacking legal footing. Whaling continues in accordance with existing laws.
Svavarsdottir, currently minister of infrastructure, was last week elected as leader of the Left Green movement, Jakobsdottir’s political home.
Asylum policy has also proved difficult for the coalition partners to agree upon. The premier’s Independence Party wants to take a tighter stance, while the Left Greens have even intervened in a deportation of a family whose application was denied. And over energy, the environmental movement bristles over the Independence Party’s plans to build more power generation.
Repeated volcanic eruptions on the country’s southwestern peninsula have also occupied the government’s attention, causing a need to rebuild infrastructure and re-house about 1% of the country’s population. The tourism-dependent island has also been grappling with persistent inflation and interest rates at the highest level in western Europe. The central bank this month cut borrowing costs by a quarter point to 9.0%.
–With assistance from Philip Tabuas.
(Updates with more details from second paragraph.)
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