Is EU membership now attractive only to the poor and underdeveloped?

Iceland’s “no” to restarting European Union accession talks has put an uncomfortable question back on the table: who still wants to join the bloc?

Icelanders rejected in a referendum last weekend a proposal from their government to resume negotiations on EU membership. The decision came even though, as the column notes, Brussels had not been calling on Iceland to return to the negotiating table or asking it to restart the process.

If an Icelandic “yes” could have added a positive tone to the story of further enlargement, it is difficult to escape the impression that the “no” sends the opposite signal. In Brussels, Politico reported, unnamed diplomats were already playing down the result, describing it as the equivalent of being rejected by someone who had not been courted in the first place.

The column had argued two weeks earlier that either possible outcome should be accepted calmly and without passion, as a normal example of democracy in questions concerning the EU. That position remains relevant, it says, despite the efforts of committed Eurosceptics to portray the European Union as the worst of all possible worlds. Even so, Iceland’s rejection opens several uncomfortable questions about the bloc’s attraction and its future enlargement.