Social media posts have been claiming that the fast food restaurant shuttered its branches in Iceland due to a public boycott linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
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00:00Did McDonald's in Iceland close because of a boycott?
00:08Social media posts have been claiming that the fast food restaurant closed its branches
00:12in Iceland due to a public boycott. The posts come with an AI-generated image
00:17showing a rundown McDonald's building and a caption asking whether boycotts work.
00:21They imply that the McDonald's exodus in Iceland was recent and the work of a
00:25concerted public campaign. Other posts link the supposed boycott to pages in support of Palestine,
00:31echoing recent calls to boycott McDonald's around the world due to its perceived support of Israel.
00:36However, the closure of McDonald's in Iceland has nothing to do with any public boycott.
00:45The fast food chain left the country on 30 October 2009 following the Icelandic financial
00:51crisis in 2008. It caused Iceland's currency, the krona, to plummet in value. This meant that
00:57the imports needed for McDonald's products became too expensive for the restaurants to keep making
01:02money. It was replaced by local fast food chain Metro, which sells similar items. As of the time
01:07of this fact check, there are no McDonald's restaurants left in Iceland, but you can still
01:11see the last cheeseburger and fries sold in the country on display. Reports from earlier this year
01:17say that all these years later it still doesn't have any mold.
01:24McDonald's has been a key target for boycotts since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023.
01:30It was criticized for giving away thousands of free meals to Israeli soldiers,
01:35prompting protests against the chain that particularly affected sales in the Middle East,
01:39Indonesia and France. As a result, it bought back its Israeli restaurants after sales suffered from
01:45the boycott. For more investigations and fact checks, head to euronews.com.