page_title: Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
section_title: Crisis of 2008 statements
hierarchical_section_title: Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson / President of Iceland / Crisis of 2008 statements
caption_attribution_description: DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 25JAN13 - Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, President of Iceland gestures during the session 'The Economic Malaise and Its Perils' at the Annual Meeting 2013 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2013. . . Copyright by World Economic Forum. . swiss-image.ch/Photo Michael Wuertenberg
context_page_description: Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson is an Icelandic politician who was the fifth President of Iceland from 1996 to 2016. He was first elected in 1996, and was elected unopposed for a second term in 2000. Ólafur was re-elected for a third term in 2004, for a fourth term in 2008, and for a record fifth and final term in 2012.
  Ólafur announced in his New Year's message on 1 January 2016, that he would be stepping down from the presidency at the end of his fifth term on 1 August 2016, after twenty years in office. However, he announced in a press conference on 18 April 2016 that he would be running for re-election, in light of the political instability caused by the release of the Panama Papers two weeks earlier. After Guðni Th. Jóhannesson and Davíð Oddsson announced their candidacies, he again changed his mind and on 9 May declared he would not run.
  Since the end of his presidency, Ólafur has been serving as Chairman of the Arctic Circle, a non-profit organization, and as Chairman of the International Renewable Energy Agency's Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation.
context_section_description: In the aftermath of the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis, Ólafur has criticized other countries for lack of help to Iceland.
  In early November, the President attended a traditional informal lunch with all ambassadors to Iceland, held by the senior Danish ambassador. According to a confidential memo from the Norwegian embassy, quoted in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen, the President said: "The North Atlantic is important to Scandinavia, the US and Britain. This is a fact these countries now seem to ignore. Then, Iceland should rather get some new friends". He praised Norway and the Faroe Islands for their swift decision to grant major loans to Iceland. He also said Iceland should rather invite Russia to use the Keflavík Air Base. According to the memo, an "amazed and smiling" Russian ambassador said Russia did not have any need for this. Ólafur also criticised the International Monetary Fund for the system's flaws and for its mistreatment of Iceland. He said it was part of Icelandic political mentality to "fight alone" rather than being threatened into submission, and that he expected Iceland to overcome the crisis sooner than the US and Britain by showing initiative and international activity in new fields. The memo underlined that the President of Iceland has no political power and that no other government official had presented similar points of view "to the same degree". The Danish ambassador to Iceland, Lasse Reimann, confirmed to the daily Politiken that the lunch had taken place, but declined to discuss on the President's comments.
  On 5 January 2010, the President of Iceland vetoed a measure of the Icelandic government to repay the governments of Britain and the Netherlands for their bailouts of customers of private Icelandic banks (no such bailout was required under Icelandic law, though on 26 May 2010 the EFTA found it was required by the terms of Iceland's membership of the EEA). The President's veto was upheld by the people of Iceland when they voted upon the measure in March 2010. This dispute is known as Icesave dispute.
  On 20 February 2011, the President of Iceland again vetoed an effort by the Icelandic government to repay (in installments over a period of years) the governments of Britain and the Netherlands. In a referendum held on 9 April 2011, Icelanders rejected for a second time a proposal to pay $5 billion to Britain and the Netherlands. Nearly 60% of Icelanders rejected the proposal put forward by the government. The President's veto was thus upheld by the people.
caption: Ólafur during the WEF 2013
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