Dr. M. Elvira Méndez-Pinedo writes: “Whatever the reason or the economic or political arguments, it can be observed now that this lacuna or gap in the EEA Agreement, together with the legal uncertainties of EU banking and financial law, has been extremely prejudicial for Iceland. Icelandic citizens do not have access to justice to the ECJ either. In EU law, any country could start an infringement case or simply take the issue of the interpretation of the State liability deriving from Directive 94/19/EC and the principle of non-discrimination before the ECJ. Iceland, on the other hand, seems to have accepted the principle of State liability and nationalisation of private debt of banking entities abroad without being entitled in the subsequent Icesave agreements to proper judicial and independent review of its legal arguments.”
Dr. Gunnar Tomasson (The Gang of 8 ) refers to “Odious Debt”: „In international law, odious debt is a legal theory which holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, such as wars of aggression, should not be enforceable. Such debts are thus considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state. In some respects, the concept is analogous to the invalidity of contracts signed under coercion.”
In The Dilemma of Odious Debts; Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati and Robert B. Thompson (pdf) write: “The prospect of yoking innocent generations of citizens to the repayment of any Profligate Debt causes an audible grinding of the moral teeth; the prospect of forcing this result on people who have already been victimized by a corrupt and despotic regime is even more distasteful.”