Council of Europe Summit’s cost for Iceland still unknown but ‘within budget’

The cost of the European Council summit for Iceland is not yet known but is believed to be within the budget, the Icelandic Office of the Police Inspector General revealed on Thursday.

As the last guests of the Council of Europe summit left the country on Thursday, the question of the cost of it for the small island republic surfaced in the public debate.

The total cost of the summit has not been revealed to the public, but the spokesman for the National Police Commissioner says it is within the budget, estimated to be close to two billion ISK (€13 million).

“The program is not quite over for us, we still have to follow the last guests out of the country,” Gunnar Hörður Garðarsson, spokesman for the Office of the Police Inspector General, declared to the Icelandic media.

“It’s safe to say that this has gone really well,” he said, adding that “This is a project of such magnitude that it took some time to put it all together, but we managed to stay within the framework we set”.

According to the Office of the Police Inspector General, costs in Iceland mainly relate to police officers’ salaries. About 600 Icelandic police officers took part in the protection effort of the Summit, helped by 100 foreign police officers from the Nordic countries.

Furthermore, equipment was bought to help efficiently protect an international event of this magnitude, in which various world leaders took part, including French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“These are conditions that are not known here, so we had to buy equipment that is usually not available in Iceland,” Gunnar Hörður said.

The participating member states paid for the travel expenses, food and accommodation of their national leaders and delegations. Meanwhile, the Council of Europe was entirely responsible for the financing of interpretation services, which were extensive. All the other costs are on Iceland and its 360,000 inhabitants (the equivalent of France’s Southern city Nice).

In an earlier interview for Iceland’s national broadcaster service RÚV, Karl Steinar Valsson, senior police officer at the National Police Commissioner declared that some of the equipment that was used was borrowed and will be returned immediately after the summit, although some of the equipment will remain available in Iceland.

“This is part of being able to deal with this kind of project in the future because in general we of course have unarmed police and will continue to work that way,” Karl Steinar said.

The Icelandic police do not routinely carry firearms while on duty, including during regular patrols, thus reflecting Iceland’s commitment to maintaining a peaceful society and a close relationship between the police and the community they serve.

(Charles Szumski | EURACTIV.com)