Norway is negotiating a broader green cooperation with the EU – Energy and Climate

In March, the Norwegian EU delegation submitted a ten-point document to the European Commission. The aim is to concretize the green alliance that the EU and Norway signed just over a year ago.

This 10-point document is exempt from public disclosure. Energy and Climate is denied access because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that this concerns negotiations with the EU, and that it could damage Norwegian interests if the content is made public.

After what Energy and Climate has confirmed, this is a clarification and concretization of what Norway wants to discuss with the EU. It includes, among other things, carbon capture and storage, offshore wind, green shipping and the development of hydrogen production.

Not binding

The Green Alliance is a so-called non-international binding agreement, in contrast to the EEA and the Schengen Agreement. This means that it is a kind of political declaration of intent. It has not been processed by the Storting. The government can enter into such agreements on its own, because they do not bind Norway legally or financially.

The big ones with advice

The ten points, which are Norway’s invitation to talks with the Commission, have been drawn up following input from a number of business players. That is, large Norwegian companies such as Statkraft, Hydro, Yara and Equinor. A number of representatives of companies and institutions represented in Brussels attended an input meeting in early March. It shows a picture on Linkedin that the EU delegation has posted, without any information about the content of the meeting.

Norwegian companies that are not represented in Brussels have had fewer opportunities to influence. In addition to the round of input from business players, the ten points must have been dealt with by the ministries concerned. It is, among others, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Climate and the Environment, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Trade and Industry – and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that coordinates the whole thing.

Conversations only

Norway has not received any written response from the EU to the document with the ten points that was sent in March. State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, Maria Varteressian, writes in an SMS to Energy and Climate: “We have received preliminary positive feedback on the Norwegian input. The objective is to achieve agreed priorities with the Commission early in the autumn.”

Nor will Norway few any written response to the inquiry to the Commission. The letter invited further talks. Such a meeting was recently held as a working lunch. A spokesman for the Commission confirms this in an email to Energy and Climate.

Create a new architecture

From the Norwegian government’s side, the agreement is intended as an important contribution to “creating a new architecture in our cooperation, with the EEA agreement at the bottom, which will give our companies as equal framework conditions and competitive opportunities in the internal market as possible”, as at the time Industry Minister Jan Christian Vestre formulated it in the Storting’s Europe Committee on 24 October 2023.

There is no shortage of words of praise when describing this agreement:

Lots to talk about

“Through the agreement, Norway and the EU will strengthen the power of the green shift. The Green Alliance provides a framework for cooperation in areas such as climate, energy, transport, sustainable financing and research.” That’s what the Norwegian EU Delegation wrote on social media recently. The background was the one-year celebration of the Green Alliance.

In what is posted on social media, Norway’s good relationship with the EU is emphasized. But the negotiations on the green alliance and industrial partnership with the EU also contain examples of cooperation lagging.

Delayed due to disagreement

The agreement on the green alliance was signed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in April 2023. The signing was delayed several times. The reason was significant disagreement between Norway and the EU about oil and gas extraction in Arctic regions. After a long tug-of-war, this was removed from the agreement.

In addition, there was considerable irritation in the EU system because it was believed that Norway did not do enough to contribute to curbing the high gas prices in 2022.

Boast of battery agreement

Just before Easter this year, then Minister of Business Jan Christian Vestre and European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič signed yet another non-international law binding agreement. It was about “sustainable land-based raw materials and battery value chains”. It is now presented as an important part of the Green Alliance. The conversations to fill it with concrete content take place in the same framework.

This agreement has given Norway a place in the EU’s battery alliance.

This is the same agreement that Vestre sent out in a press release in Easter 2022 stating that he had concluded everything with the EU. The Ministry of Trade and Industry corrected the message after Energy and Climate asked for access to the alleged agreement.

The EU is angry with Norway

It was signed in March this year. The reason for the delay is widespread dissatisfaction in the EU that Norway has a significant backlog of EU laws, which have not been incorporated into the EEA Agreement. This recently peaked with the letter from Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson. Here, the EU is threatening countermeasures if Norway does not incorporate the six-year-old renewables directive into the EEA agreement by August.

In addition, the EU used the failure to sign as pressure on Norway in the negotiations on the EEA funds, which were finalized at the turn of the year. The price was NOK 38 billion over the next seven years. Norway must account for around 95 per cent.

The EU received changes to the agreement shortly before signing. The reason was that the EU wanted to specify that the cooperation on minerals only concerns land-based minerals. In the EU, there is considerable skepticism about Norway’s plans to extract seabed minerals, something a significant majority in the European Parliament has warned against.