Norway's windfall: should it go to Ukraine?
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"Are we a nation of money-grubbers and war profiteers?" That's what we must look like to our European neighbours, said Asbjørn Svarstad in Nettavisen (Oslo).
Norway is sitting on a huge war windfall that could solve the continent's problems in an instant. Our sovereign wealth fund is now worth €1.7 trillion – and €109 billion of that came straight from our neighbours' pockets. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin cut off Russian gas supplies, sending energy prices skyrocketing and leaving Norway to lap up the profits as the continent's biggest gas supplier. And given that our European allies are pushing their budgets to the limit to help fund Ukraine's fight for survival, we owe it to them to plough that money back into rearmament. Yet until last week, when, under significant pressure, the government more than doubled its contribution to €7 billion – we were the "Uncle Scrooge" of Europe: shamefully, we've donated less to Ukraine as a share of GDP than our Scandinavian neighbours.
Even €7 billion is a "pathetic" amount, said Peter Wolodarski and Christian Jensen, the editors (respectively) of a Swedish and a Danish newspaper, in Aftenposten (Oslo). We used to view the home of the Nobel Peace Prize as a generous and globally orientated country. Now we "don't recognise our Norwegian brothers and sisters".
But Norway's government has stood its ground, said Håvard Halland in the FT (London). Even the finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who previously as head of Nato pushed countries to give more, argues against donating more to Ukraine. The wealth fund is governed by strict fiscal rules, he argues: it's specifically designed "for future generations of Norwegians".
And he's not alone in flatly rejecting the idea that Norway has a "special responsibility" to help Ukraine, said Eirik Røsvik in Verdens Gang (Oslo). Norway's former finance minister, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, argues that Norway has no need to penalise itself for being a perfectly legitimate energy exporter. And besides, he says, "if Norway were suddenly to give three times as much as, let's say, Germany has done, other countries will soon give less". Far better, he believes, that Norway just remains a "stable" ally of Ukraine.
Alas, my country is drunk on "the illusion of wealth", said Knut N. Kjær in Aftenposten. Oil riches aren't the same as power, and we're still a small vulnerable country on the border of Vladimir Putin's imperialism. "More than ever, we need predictability and security in our relationship with Europe", and we won't get that by being "opportunistic egoists". In fact, donating the windfall would be an investment in our future. Ukrainian soldiers are battling an "existential threat to freedom and democracy" – not just to their own country but to ours, too.
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