The bookies were right. Iceland’s strangest fisheries minister, Jon Bjarnason, is on the way out, removed from office during a massive New Year reshuffle that also sees his ministry uprooted.
The fisheries and agriculture ministries are set to be amalgamated yet again, this time with the ministry of economic affairs into a single unit that is expected to represent a single ministry covering industry and employment that has yet to be christened.
Bjarnason has been a massive headache to the present Icelandic government, both as a staunch anti-European who reputedly refused to let his ministry of fisheries and agriculture have anything more than absolutely necessary to do with the ongoing accession negotiations to the European Union, while also failing to get to grips with the government’s mandate of reforming fisheries management.
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