Iceland Review is reporting that a new government was agreed yesterday. As expected the prospective prime minister is Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir from the Social Democratic Alliance. They will be in alliance with the Left-Greens. These two parties have 27 of the 63 seats in the Alþingi. The minority coalition will be supported by the Progressive Party, which has seven seats. There are four cabinet seats for each party. Two ministries are occupied by people from outside parliament, including the Minister of Business Affairs, which is to be held by an associate professor of economics from the University of Iceland. The programme is available here.

It is reported that the date of the general election has been brought forward to 25 April. If it is considered desirable, membership of the EU (or presumably candidacy for membership) will be put to a referendum. (The SDA are in favour, but the Left-Greens are opposed).

A really interesting report in the Reykjavik Grapevine reports that as part of the parliamentary deal the Progressive party wanted the creation of a constituent council that would review the constitution. According to the post: “The proposed council would consist of 63 members – like parliament – and the whole country would be regarded as one voting district. Any citizen would be able to run for this council, except for the president, MPs and ministers. The council would have 60 days to review the constitution and report their findings.” There is mention of the council in the government programme, where it states that amendments “will be made” on the following issues:
a) Reference will be made to natural resources owned by the nation.
b) Provision will be made for national referendums.
c) The process for amending the Constitution by special referendum.
It will be interesting to see whether the council will also consider constitutional changes affecting the country’s semi-presidential status. Recall that Iceland’s written constitution, which appears to provide the president with full power, bears no resemblance to its parliamentary practice. Therefore, any major overhaul of the constitution is likely to have implications from a semi-presidential point of view.

The chapter by Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson in Robert Elgie (ed.) Semi-presidentialism in Europe, gives a good overview of the Icelandic system.