When Ine Eriksen Søreide finally confirmed her candidacy as the new leader of Norway’s Conservative Party (Høyre) just before the weekend, she not only swept aside all other contenders by winning their support. She also revived hopes for those who want Norway to finally join the European Union (EU).
Ine Eriksen Søreide, a former defense- and foreign minister, has long wanted Norway to join the European Union. She’s shown here speaking on EU membership at the Conservatives’ annual meeting in 2023, and now Norwegian media are calling her Norway’s new “EU Queen.” PHOTO: Høyre/Hans Kristian Thorbjørnsen
Søreide, highly regarded both inside and outside her party, will at the very least revive the EU membership debate. She also aims to win it by mounting a new EU referendum and getting a majority of Norwegians to vote in favour of joining the EU.
“We are clearly a ‘yes’ party, and there’s a lot of EU engagement within the party,” Søreide told newspaper Aftenposten on Thursday, just after breaking her silence over whether she wanted to succeed Erna Solberg as party leader. Solberg stepped down after the Conservatives posted one of their worst losses ever in the September national election. Søreide now seems to be re-branding the party a bit, calling it “liberal Conservatives” and ready to take over government power at any time in case Labour’s newly re-elected but minority government should fall.
Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide served eight years in government and is now ready to lead Norway’s Conservative Party (Høyre). PHOTO: SMK
Søreide served as Solberg’s defense- and foreign minister during the Conservatives’ two terms leading the government from 2013 to 2021, when Labour took over. Even though the recently re-elected Labour Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre also supports EU membership, neither he nor Solberg wanted to re-open a potentially divisive EU debate. They have suppressed such a debate for years, not just because both of their so-called “steering” parties lost their bids for EU membership in a 1994 referendum, but because of all the other turmoil in the world at present.
It’s precisely the ongoing turmoil that’s behind Søreide’s continued support for EU membership. In times of trouble, she thinks it’s best for like-minded nations to stand together, also because of several new factors. Norway and two of its fellow non-EU members, Iceland and Liechtenstein, have long had a trade and policy agreement with the EU but Iceland is expected to hold a membership referendum next year and may join. “Then we’ll be in a completely different situation,” Søreide told Aftenposten, with only Liechtenstein as its partner in the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement.
Søreide also argues that developments within the EU have made it more difficult for Norway to remain outside of it. Even though Støre and Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg have often been invited to join some events and meetings otherwise closed to only EU members, Norway can’t expect that to continue. Norway was, for example, effectively sidelined earlier this year from the EU’s negotiations with US President Donald Trump on tariffs and other issues. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, it was only with the help of neighbouring EU-member Sweden that Norway secured vaccination allocations.
“The EU is now very clear that there should be greater differences for being a member and not being a member,” Søreide said. She expects the EU to also usher in other countries that have been waiting for membership approval. Norway risks being isolated outside the EU, with no say in how EU policy is formulated even though Norway must follow it because of the EEA agreement that gives Norway full access to the EU’s inner market.
Ine Eriksen Søreide is shown here with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre at Liberation- and Veterans’ Day ceremonies in May. She served as leader of the Parliament’s defense- and foreign affairs committee after Støre’s Labour Party could form a new government coalition following the national election in 2021. Labour won re-election in September and Støre has carried on, but with only 28.2 percent of the vote. That makes his government vulnerable to falling if he fails to win support from other parties for his proposed state budget. PHOTO: Forsvaret/Torgeir Haugaard
EU sentiment in Norway has also been changing, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine. Public opinion polls have still been showing a majority against EU membership but it has narrowed considerably and there have been earlier calls for a new EU debate. The non-socialist Liberal Party, which has long cooperated with the Conservatives, has formally come out in favour of EU membership and former top politicians that were opposed in 1994 now support it.
The Greens Party, which just scored its best national election result ever, has also formally adopted a pro-EU membership agenda because of its admiration for EU-climate policy. After Søreide emerged as the top candidate to lead the Conservatives, Greens leader Arild Hermstad quickly promised to cooperate with her on efforts to become a full EU member.
The Greens have otherwise allied themselves on the left side of Norwegian politics, led by Labour but including the Reds and Socialist Left (SV) parties that oppose EU membership. Labour Party leaders Støre and Jens Stoltenberg, now Norway’s finance minister, personally support EU membership but have, like Solberg, suppressed a new EU membership debate. There’s also still disagreement within Labour on the EU issue.
The pro-EU organization Europabevegelsen, meanwhile, also has a new leader who hails from both the Labour Party and Norway’s labour movement. Trine Lise Sundnes took over the helm last weekend after being a Member of Parliament for Labour and leader of the trade union federation Handel og Kontor.
Trine Lise Sundnes is a former Labour Party politician and trade union leader who now leads the national organization in Norway that promotes EU membership, Europabevegelse. PHOTO: Arbeiderpartiet
Sundnes candidly admits to voting against EU membership herself 25 years ago, when she was 24 years old. She told newspaper Dagsavisen on Saturday that she thinks there are “thousands of people like me who think it’s time to re-evaluate their position.”
As the pro-EU organization she now leads gathered in Oslo last weekend, it also ran an ad in the staunchly anti-EU newspaper Klassekampen, noting how Denmark’s Socialist People’s Party claims the EU “gives us an outstanding possibility to bind the European labour markets together and improve social welfare across borders.” The ad also quoted the party as claiming that “EU solutions” yield the “best and most effective answers when Europe is challenged by climate change, refugees, tax fraud, social dumping and poverty.”
Asked why she now, like Søreide, will work for a new formal debate on EU membership and promote it, Sundnes replied “democracy, democracy, democracy” because only EU membership will give Norway a seat at the EU’s negotiating tables.
“It’s lonesome standing outside (the EU) in the times we’re now living in,” she told Dagsavisen. “We should be part of forming policy at the EU.” As a major energy-producing nation, she said, it would be much better for Norway, for example, “that we’re in the room when the EU works on its energy plans.”
Søreide could hardly agree more, leading to some potential political alliances. The protectionist, rural-oriented Center Party will likely mount strong opposition in order to protect its farming constituency from any reduction of the tariffs on food imports that keep food prices high in Norway, but that’s part of the call for wide public debate. Søreide herself says it will be a long process before there’s another actual referendum on EU membership.
Most important, perhaps, is to give a new generation of Norwegian voters a chance to have their say. No one under the age of 49 in Norway has been allowed to vote on the issue, and calls are rising that they should be.
“If we don’t (have a debate and a referendum) now, when should we?” asked Lars West Johnsen, editor of the traditionally EU-skeptical newspaper Dagsavisen last weekend. The paper that was long tied to the Labour Party noted how Sweden and Finland finally joined NATO because “new times push forward new choices.” Now, it suggested, it’s time for Norway to make some new choices, and perhaps join the EU.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
