Why Norway is edging towards a fresh EU membership bid
Why Norway is edging towards a fresh EU membership bid
www.ft.com
Why Norway is edging towards a fresh EU membership bid
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25 comments
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My main concern about a EU membership is what happens to our national fund and out sovereign right to our natural resources. I’m in the unsure column as for now if this comes up to a vote.
Time is coming where keeping the status quo won’t be possible and I think more Norwegians are starting to realize this. Change, in some form or another, is coming.
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Everything will be taken care of mate. The Netherlands also had massive gas reserves while it was in the EU. The EU is an economic union. Norway probably also has challenges or flaws and the union can fill those gaps. Similarly you bring something and that fills a gap elsewhere. It is not about your own wealth, it is about the combined wealth. The Netherlands has always contributed a lot to the EU states (especially southern), however we have also gained a lot in social & economic freedom and economic wealth through strong partnerships (our ports also are key assets for German and Belgian industries).
Look at the US; unity creates strength, division creates weakness. Do you think California (with the tech community) or Texas (with its oil fields) would be as strong as they are now if they were independent? Nope.
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Only a strong and united Europe can successfully stand up against the bullies to the West and to the East.
Right populists might have tried to make it look different, but despite all it's flaws all countries end up gaining more from the EU than they lose. Looks like many people in the UK were disappointed after effects of leaving kicked in and felt mislead by politicians who pushed the vote for leaving.
We certainly need to reform the EU to be faster, less bureaucratic, and so on, but this is the best we got right now and like democracy, it's a shitty organisation but better than all existing alternatives, including not having it at all ;)
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just as a comparison, the big swedish natural resources (mining, fishing, forestry) are still basically all swedish (a bit of the forestry is part finnish which i don't really see as an issue) so that's not really a problem, and there's no real movement in the EU to grab it.
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So the EU takes no cut whatsoever on what Sweden makes on their exports? I doubt that. Some is obvious, but how much? What does the regular Swede stand to gain from it?
If I remember right there were talks of the EU imposing tariffs on Norwegian seafood due to a disagreement on who could fish where on our borders in the North Sea and Skagerrak. I didn’t hear more about if after reading a news story last year so I don’t know how it was resolved. But this is one thing I’ll have to look into before making a choice if I’m against or for a full membership.
What happens to our fossil fuel exports? Will we keep complete sovereignty or will there be a deal where Norway is forced to share? For example, look what sharing Norwegian produced hydroelectricity with Europe has done to the cost of electricity. Granted, the Norwegian government has made some serious overhead by selling green energy to the EU and buying cheaper energy back. But Norwegians have seen a ridiculous increase on electricity costs also, people don’t like that.
Another factor is Russia. We are territorial neighbors in the arctic and have a fairly brittle agreement about a very, very strategic island called Svalbard. Not to mention fishing territory in the north and arctic sea. We’re obviously a founding member of NATO, but will a EU membership create more tension with Putin?
We are facing issues that we have to have faith will be resolved in the best interest of all parties without us losing more than we bargained for.
All this being said, I’m not completely opposed to becoming a member. I’m just reserved.
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i mean they don't take a cut directly, but the membership fees are proportional to GDP. some countries get back more money than they pay.
the electricity thing is different, and annoying. electricity doesn't care about markets, it just goes wherever. the nordics still have europe's cheapest electricity by far, but as long as the grids are connected together it's all just one big machine and trying to treat it as a segmented market just leads to problems. it's an abstraction.
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I am also worried about our agriculture... it is difficult to farm here which makes us already one of the least self sufficient countries in terms of farmed goods and joining eu without any allowance for protectionism here would destroy what we have. Given the focus on preparedness for war and resilience these days that would in my opinion be a horrible idea.
edit: but we need a public debate to get some clarity in these issues asap and i am glad it looks like we are headed towards that. But i am also afraid of russian propaganda poisoning that debate and populist parties like sp and frp falling prey to that and driving a wedge in the population
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SP is hopefully dead after they rage quit the Government and have continued to go back on most issues they’ve been focusing on. Vedum is a fucking idiot and I think most people see right through him.
FRP on the other hand, they’re not that far right og AP and H. And I doubt Listhaug would actually do much more than impose some restrictions on social benefits, immigration and cur some meaningless taxes that only apply to rich people.(Like the horsepower tax on boats) But they’re both populists through and through.
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They are also anti-eu and unafraid to use populist tactics to sway people regardless of how true it is. With russian interference to be expected in the election (and likely promote anti-eu sentiments) i think we will see this parroted by sp and frp, and i see that as a risk of poisoning what is otherwise a necessary debate about our future.
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But if that agricultural sector isn’t that productive, does it even make sense at an EU level? Aren’t you better off trying to move to a services and information economy as much as possible, while you let countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy handle agriculture? The solidarity of EU membership would mean you could rely on this kind of arrangement.
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In almost any other sector I would agree. Food and water supply, not so much. War and other potential global disruptive events could cut us off from mainland europe or at least make deliveries more difficult. We are already very dependent on imports. This could make us entirely so. I dont want to starve.
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I guess that makes sense
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25 comments