Norway: Norway joins Schengen
01 March 1999
On 9 June 1997 Norway, not a member of the EU, by parliamentary decision entered an agreement on collaboration with Schengen. The agreement stated that Norway would participate in all Schengen activities, including the vast Schengen Information System and Sirene. Norway would have the right to be present and participate in discussions at all decision?making levels, but would have no right to vote and no veto in case of disagreement. If an unsolvable disagreement occurred, Norway would, according to the agreement, be free to leave Schengen. Critics argued that this would in effect leave Norway in a powerless situation. They argued that the option to leave Schengen in case of lasting disagreement would not be a realistic alternative in view of the many Schengen functions that Norway would be involved in.
A minority in the Norwegian parliament, composed primarily of Center Party members, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals (in addition to two small socialist parties) opposed Norwegian association with Schengen. The Center Party was particularly outspoken. The parliamentary majority favouring association were the Labour Party (Norway's largest party), which was in government (but not with a majority in parliament), and the two conservative parties.
Immediately following the Norwegian parliament's agreement to join Schengen, the Amsterdam summit on 16?17 June 1997 decided to incorporate Schengen into the EU structure. This necessitated a new agreement of association, now with the EU, and the Labour Party government started to prepare negotiations. However, in the national elections in September 1997, the Labour Party did not attain the proportion of voters it viewed as a minimum following (a rather strange, self?imposed criterion) and left office. Consequently, the three main "no?to?Schengen" parties (which are also "no?to?EU membership" parties) ? the Center Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals ? formed a new minority government. On this basis, one might have expected a turn of the tide concerning Schengen. No such turn occurred. Parliament's majority was still in favour of Schengen, and the three once critical parties soon became silent as far as any criticism of Schengen was concerned. The coalition government argued that a majority in parliament had already voted for a Schengen association, and that their task now would be to carry on and conclude what the parliamentary majority had decided.
The government argued that the new round of negotiations, now with the EU, concerned the institutional arrangements of the agreement, and not its material content, that is, not the many Schengen?duties that Norway would have to take on. The material content, it was contended, had already been agreed on by majority vote in parliament. In March 1999 a bill and a white paper were issued to that effect, and parliament's decision is expected parallel to the entry into force of the Amsterdam treaty.
There are three major and dangerous flaws in the government's position. Firstly, the institutional arrangements which now are on the table, give Norway less say in Schengen matters than before. To repeat, in the earlier agreement, Norway had secured full participation in discussions in all Schengen decision?making bodies. According to the new agreement, Norway will not be allowed to participate in discussions of Schengen matters in the EU bodies which now supplant the Schengen bodies. Instead Norway, and Iceland, which is in the same position, and has negotiated the same agreement, will participate in a Joint Committee outside the EU structure, comprising representatives of Norway and Iceland, the members of the Council and the Commission. Norway and Iceland may make proposals to the Joint Committee, but decisions are to be made by the competent EU bodies. This leaves Norway and Iceland in a vulnerable outsider position.
Secondly, though the new agreement supposedly only deals with institutional arrangements (s