“At a good social meeting in the Framsókn society up north”

“Mr President. I would like to start by wishing all the nation's people congratulations on the news that has gone somewhat unnoticed regarding the conclusion of the Icesave case, which ended with a complete victory for us Icelanders a few days ago. It is truly a cause for celebration that there was a courageous group of people at the time who fought for this outcome to be achieved. It was not without challenges and various attempts were made to prevent it from happening. I see that this amuses some members of parliament, and I am happy about that because, naturally, we are in politics to make people happy, and this conclusion has certainly warmed the hearts and minds of the nation. I can see just by the members of parliament here in the back row that they are delighted with this outcome.

The reason I am here today was otherwise to thank the hon. member Bjarkey Gunnarsdóttir for the speech she had just given. I felt like I had come to a good meeting of the Framsókn Association in the north because I could agree with most of what she said regarding the tariff reductions that have been made here. The haste was not greater in this matter than that the negotiations began, as mentioned here earlier, quite a number of years ago but were eventually concluded the other day.

What is, however, necessary to do now that this milestone has been reached — and note bene, it would of course never have been achieved if we had already unilaterally abolished all tariffs, we had a bargaining chip — is to establish some agreement on how this will be implemented. Firstly, it must be absolutely crystal clear that these reductions reach all the way to consumers. There needs to be information now about how pricing in Iceland works. We operate under free markup and in order for consumers to make an informed decision, it is necessary to open up about how product pricing is done everywhere in the market.”

Þorsteinn Sæmundsson – in parliamentary work 22 September 2015.