Europe Day is celebrated on 9 May across the continent. Here at home, the day may disappear a little among the other festive days, but that does not make it any less important. Because Norway needs Europe.
The day marks a speech given by former French Prime Minister Robert Schuman. In 1950 he presented the Schuman Plan, a precursor to the Coal and Steel Union. The dream was peace in Europe, and 9 May has since been celebrated as Europe Day.
Schuman’s vision of bringing rival European powers into binding cooperation worked so well that what started as a limited free trade project in two industrial areas has now become the largest peacekeeping cooperation in the world. The Coal and Steel Union became the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, then the European Community (EC), and finally today’s European Union (EU). Norway has followed this development from the outside.
This year the European movement celebrates 75 years. It is an entire human life. It has also been a time period where the world has changed faster than at any time in history. When the European movement in Norway was founded in 1949, the countries of Europe had just emerged from the most devastating war in world history. The second most destructive was on the same continent, barely a few decades before. That only seven years after the end of the last world war people came together and talked about how to achieve lasting peace between states that were more used to conflict than cooperation is really inconceivable.
Many may forget this today. It is written off as a matter of course that millions of people who had been fighting each other in trenches across several continents, with wide ideological and economic differences, should put all that aside to ensure peace. Today, there are probably not many people who believe that relations between Ukraine and Russia will be normalized anytime soon, if ever. However, Europe managed it after the Second World War. For that, the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.
Today’s EU is much more than economics and trade. The Union comprises 27 countries, 450 million inhabitants, and stands as an international guarantor of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. This year was also the 20th anniversary of the EU’s eastern enlargement. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, EU membership became the major goal for the Eastern European countries that had been subject to the Soviet Union. This is still the case. With the exception of Great Britain and Switzerland, all countries in Europe are either members of the EU, B members of the EU (read: EEA), or have EU membership as an expressed goal. To become EU members, the countries had to show that they took democracy seriously. The rest is history.
In just under a month, there will be an election to the European Parliament. 370 million EU citizens have the right to vote in the election, 26 million of them for the first time. It is the world’s second largest democratic exercise, after India’s parliamentary elections. There are at any given time around 375,000 EU citizens entitled to vote in Norway, including the undersigned who is a Dutch citizen living in Bodø. In June, these will have the right to vote in an election which for the next 5 years will create legislation Norway must follow. Norwegian citizens have no opportunity to influence the above-mentioned legislation through the EU elections, unless the person concerned is also a citizen of an EU country. I am a civil servant and administer EU legislation on behalf of Norway. Ironically, the legal acts that I work with exist mainly not in Norwegian, but in 24 official EU languages, including Dutch. This will also continue as long as Norway chooses to remain outside the EU. There is a great lack of democratic rights for Norwegian citizens as long as they cannot participate in elections to the European Parliament.
Norway needs the EU. We are of course part of Europe, both geographically, economically and culturally. For us, as a small country with an open and globally oriented economy, one of the most important things we do is to secure good and fair international agreements. We are involved in dozens of international organisations, committees and projects. But the biggest, and most debated, is the EEA agreement.
The EEA agreement is very important for Norway. NUPI concluded in January that participation in the single market has led to strong growth in trade (+35-65 per cent) and an increase in real income (+2-6 per cent). Well over half of mainland exports and imports go to the EU. We are also dependent on European labor in important sectors such as health, construction, agriculture and care for the elderly.
In April, the most comprehensive Norwegian public investigation (NOU) of the EEA agreement to date was published: NOU 2024:7 – Norway and the EEA: Development and experiences. The investigation was a demand from the Center Party in the Hurdal negotiations with Labor Party, after both the Center Party and the Federation wanted an investigation into the EEA and possible alternatives to it. The answer was what the European movement has always claimed. Norway needs Europe, and we have profited very well from the close cooperation we have had over the past 30 years. None of the corresponding agreements are good enough. Switzerland’s solution is unavailable, as none of the parties there are actually satisfied, and Britain’s is worse in almost all measurable areas than both membership and the EEA. The investigation’s conclusion was, to paraphrase Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, that the only real alternative to the EEA agreement is full EU membership.
Europe Day marks peace, friendship and cooperation. The European movement has worked for this for 75 years, and we will continue to do so. For us, it is both right and important that Norway once again applies for EU membership. The future of Europe is discussed every day in peaceful surroundings in Brussels. Norway should join in on that.
Happy May 9th!
