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Comment by anthonybennis | Hacker News Reader

Benefit is equal access to Common Market as an EU member.

Sorry, I meant benefit of EEA over EU membership.

They have some "special rights" on natural resources. i.e oil, fishery. I think the EU will close that loophole soon.

Also, EU has a ruleset adapted to the climate of central Europe and not to cold places where almost no food grows and eating seals and fighting polar bears is how you stay alive. This is an extreme example, but Norway is more dependent on fish for sustenance than many other countries.

> eating seals and fighting polar bears is how you stay alive

Your image of Norway may be a bit off..

It's true though that Norway is overly protective of its food industry. And arguably for good reason since it wouldn't be competitive at all if integrated with the rest of Europe.

As a Norwegian, I do like the idea that foreigners see me as capable of fighting a polar bear.

As for seals, I've eaten seal, I think, but it's hardly been a dietary mainstay... We used to have whale regularly when I was a kid, mostly because back then it was much cheaper than beef (and much tougher, and oily... it was not great meat - it's expensive now due to low supply and nostalgia).

I am Norwegian, apparently I just didn't express myself clearly enough.

Norway is dependent on fish mostly because of the export value. A lot of fish is eaten in Norway, sure but the Norwegian economy is such that local production has very little to do with what people choose to eat.

The only place in Norway Polar bears live is Svalbard, far North of the mainland. Most Norwegians have never visited because it's far away (a 1h 40m flight North from Tromsø in Northern Norway - similar to how long it takes to fly South to Central Europe from Oslo) and way too cold and miserable.

Seal is something few people eat very often. A huge proportion of the population will never ever have tasted it. Like whale, it's uncommon these days.

Is there any reason for the EU to close that loophole now ?

It seems to be a pretty good partnership so far, and I did not read anything about a will from either side to change anything about it yet, but I might be misinformed

It's pretty stupid to call it a loophole at all. It's like calling the Xbox Series S a next-gen gaming loophole.

They can't "close that loophole". It's an integral part of the EEA treaty. If the EU withdraws from the EEA treaty it would virtually guarantee that support for EU membership in Norway would sink like a rock out of sheer anger. It would lead to Norway withdrawing further from the EU, not joining, so it'd be entirely counterproductive.

This is true, Norway and Switzerland are strong economies that can stay outside EU. Norway have a lot of oil compared to the number of people who lives there, which makes Norway a more independent economy than for example UK. I do think Norway would benefit by becoming a full EU member. But there are also good reasons not to. So the EEA treaty is the best of both worlds. Norway lose and gain some.

Not having to adopt the Euro is also a "special right".

It's not well known, but all EU countries are required to adopt the Euro (except for Denmark who have a real opt-out). The countries who haven't are using a loophole to bypass the requirement of Euro adoption, by purposefully failing to fulfill some standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_the_eurozone

For Norway the reason is fish. Since they're not in the EU, they don't have to allow others access to fish in their waters.

It's tragicomic that this was part of the reason for Brexit, but they ended up with letting other countries fish in their waters anyways.

Weren't pretty much all the reasons for Brexit bullshit from the start? I heard that some politicians even gave nonsensical statements in more recent interviews so that searches for various keywords would hit those instead of the original Brexit promises.

And can fish without any external limit. See the pilot whales hunt in the faroe islands: https://youtu.be/ws99HlPBySA

The Faroe islands are not Norwegian, and Norway does not allow hunt of pilot whales.

EDIT: That's not to say Norway doesn't still do whaling, but quotas are only for minke whales. Of a quota of 1278 for 2019, 429 where caught. But pilot whales explicitly still do not meet the conditions required (size of population etc.) for Norway to allow hunt.

and agriculture (and agriculture subsidies).

This is a big one for Norway as food security has been a big strategic focus for Norway ever since the British naval blockade against Denmark-Norway during the Napoleonic wars, reaffirmed by the hardships during the Nazi occupation.

It's still largely politically untenable in Norway to oppose agriculture subsidies.

There is something a bit sad about having present day policy be determined by the Napoleonic wars.

At this point it's more of a curiosity than something most people are aware of. It was the starting point of a realisation that choking off just a handful of trade routes could starve the country.

Today the main reminder is that Norwegian school children still tend to learn the epic poem "Terje Vigen" by Ibsen, about a man who braves the blockade to feed his family and is captured - coupled with food security being a talking point in other subjects. It's not pushed very hard, and many probably at this point don't even make the connection.

The main modern justification is WW2, where the subject of food security gets reinforced with stories of bread made with bark etc., and post-war rationing.

Couple that with the constant fear of the Soviet Union (to the point that when growing up, we had regular air raid siren tests - today they're so rare the newspapers write articles to explain what they are) only reducing to unease about Russia, and food security is still a political topic.

We still do the air raid tests here too, every 1st Monday of the month at noon, but they are more for other kinds of disasters (pollution, gas leaks, large fires and so on). That system is about to be phased out completely, because mobile phones are a much faster way to reach people.

Personally I don't mind the sirens, they tend to work pretty reliably and every time the mobile phone network was used to indicate something was up for some reason I totally missed the message, never received it or received it more than a day later.

I think both EEA members could negotiate carve-outs where the EU rules don't hold for them and they keep certain privileges.

E.g. Switzerland can still have customs and charge customs charges on some items.

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