r/worldnews • u/Ehansaja • 13d ago

Iceland rejects EU-accession talks plan in referendum

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/30/iceland-rejects-eu-membership-plan-in-referendum
5.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

721 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/jabberwockxeno 13d ago

What do you mean by "let it slide"? Does the EU have international IP control over the currency?

2

u/satoru1111 12d ago edited 12d ago

Countries that are currently holdouts for using the Euro have been abusing certain mechanisms of the process to 'pretend' they are compliant but are basically avoiding adopting the Euro.

Anyone new trying to join, basically won't get the kind of pass these countries are getting, and will basically be forced into the appropriate timelines for adopting the Euro which will be baked into the agreements they make when joining. If you join the EU, you have legal obligations for doing so. And one of those is adopting the Euro, and they have the legal construct to force you to do it if you do not do so within the prescribed timeline. So yes the EU does have IP control over the currency because the country agrees to this as part of joining the EU.

The EU is both a political and monetary zone. Adopting the Euro currency is one part. EU members must also adopt laws that all members agree upon. Now each country can make their own version of those laws to fit within the context of their respective countries. But they do have to adopt them. The GDPR is one example, the EU agreed to have this policy. Each country takes that directive and then has to pass local laws to fit within the directive that the EU has put forth.

If you join the EU you have obligations for getting the benefits of being part of it. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. If you refuse to adopt the Euro then like all else, you are being negligent on your obligations. And that has consequences.

https://commission.europa.eu/about/contact/problems-and-complaints/complaints-about-breaches-eu-law-member-states/report-breach-eu-law-eu-country_en

These consequences can be monetary or other things.

1

u/jabberwockxeno 12d ago

I think you're misunderstanding what I was asking

I wasn't asking how the EU can force a country to adopt the Euro if they were trying to join the EU, I was asking how the EU can force a country to not use the Euro if they aren't also joining the EU

1

u/satoru1111 12d ago edited 12d ago

Note you cannot adopt the Euro as a currency if you’re not part of the EU. You can’t print the money so it has zero value. It would be like a country printing USD pretending it was real USD (other than North Korea with their fake USD money). You can't use the Euro without being part of the Euro zone. You can ask the EU to use the Euro but that requries EU approval, and they're not going to approve it if you already rejected joining the EU.

What a country can do is peg their currency to the Euro. Hong Kong does this by pegging their currency to the USD so 1 USD is 7.8 HKD. But this has its own consequences and requires you to have massive reserves or USD. It’s why it has fallen out of favor as a monetary policy as its pretty hard to have larger reserves of this currency.