Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Audun Halvorsen had his first official visit to Kyiv on May 14 since assuming his position in September. He came to reassure Norway’s commitment to Ukraine but also to send the message that Ukrainian officials are hearing often from their Western partners — to speed up judicial reform.
Rule of law is something highly valued in the West and without it Ukraine won’t be able to get more support from Western partners as Russia is waging a war in Donbas.
“We have a close partnership with Ukraine that has been I think improving and strengthening over the last couple of years. That goes for the political contact which has been picking up,” Halvorsen told the
Kyiv Post at the Norwegian Embassy in Kyiv.
Going into summer, Halvorsen is looking forward to two key Ukraine-European Union events. One is
Ukraine Reform Conference in Copenhagen on June 27, where many European Union foreign ministers and representatives from NATO, the G7 countries and international organizations will be present. The second one is the annual NATO Summit in Brussels in July.
Copenhagen and Brussels will be the milestones that signal Ukraine’s commitment to the reform agenda to the international community, according to Halvorsen.
Halvorsen knows the country pretty well: Even though the one-and-a-half day visit was Halvorsen’s first trip to Ukraine as a foreign ministry representative, he lived in Kyiv in 2010 for a year as his wife worked for the United Nations.
Reforms overdue
The long-delayed anti-corruption court, based on recommendations from the European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission, and the Council of Europe is “the obvious first priority.”
But Ukraine should also show progress in its security sector reform. “Lots of difficult reforms processes have been initiated and are ongoing but there are still some of the most difficult issues remaining,” the deputy minister said. Ukraine should “maintain the momentum” and move forward on these issues also before Ukraine’s upcoming presidential election in March 2019.
Norway has been providing Ukraine with a reform-based support package worth around 25 million euros a year since 2014 and isn’t planning to give any additional financial support in the near future.
Doing business
“We should try to leverage the funding available now to attract more business opportunities, more investments,” he said. “The long-term sustainable solution for growth is the private sector growth.”
More Norwegian businesses are showing interest in Ukraine. For example, Norwegian Scatec Solar plans to build solar panels with a total capacity of 150 megawatts in Ukraine. Halvorsen met with Scatec and the Norwegian-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce.
“They are optimistic and they would like to invest more,” he said. Halvorsen wants to see more of these success stories in Ukraine being showcased not only to Norwegian businesses but to the international community as well as it is “very important in attracting the next generation of investments.”
Norway sees competitive advantage in Ukraine’s information technology sector and its highly skilled labor force.
“I know that there’s a lot of interest from Norwegian companies in that,” he said.
But so far Norway has more to offer, specifically in regards to foreign policy.
Ukraine can learn from Norway “the value of building broad national consensus on important issues both in foreign policy and on the domestic agenda, that provides continuity over time, resilience to outside and predictability for outside investors,” Halvorsen said.
Bordering with Russia
The Norwegian official is sure that his country has such resilience, even to its large neighbor, Russia, which shares 200 kilometers of land border and more than 2,000 kilometers of sea border.
With Russia’s President Vladimir Putin being re-elected for the fourth time, Halvorsen assures that Norway doesn’t define its relationship with Ukraine through Russia.
“We have a strong bilateral relationship that should stand on its own two feet,” he said. “And we also have a relationship with Russia that we need to maintain in some way or the other regardless of the Russian leadership. That’s sort of the truth of being a small neighbor to a big country.”
Norway’s approach to Russia has always been two-pronged, he said. “We like to use two key words — firmness and predictability,” he said.
“On the one side we are a strong NATO ally, we have very close bilateral relations with the U.S., we are very strongly committed to the European community values… and we have used that position to maintain a dialogue with Russia on issues of mutual interest but from a position which cannot be questioned.”
Halvorsen, whose previous position was as political adviser to Norway’s Defense Ministry, assures that Norway’s border with Russia is “well-maintained.”
Norway is also strongly committed to keeping sanctions against Russia because of its war against Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.
“In the light of the recent developments, the Salisbury incident for example, I think the need to maintain a strong and coherent position towards Russia is as strong as ever,” he said.
Norway still did not decide whether it will enforce more sanctions against Russia.
Energy security
But one critical role that Norway has in countering Russia’s aggression against the E.U. is in energy security.
“We are playing an important part in the European energy security and also in the robustness and the resilience of the European energy supply,” he said. “We have had a longstanding position going back to the 70s that we are not politicizing energy, customers buying Norwegian oil and gas know that they are buying from a stable and predictable supplier.”
Norway delivers around 40 percent of the U.K.’s gas and also has major exports to Germany. In addition, it is providing liquefied natural gas to Lithuania.
“We are also exploring the possibility of connecting the Norwegian pipeline network with Poland through Denmark — the so called Baltic (Pipe).”
This is why Norway is looking into expanding its cooperation with Ukraine on energy efficiency and independence reform such as advising how to govern state-owned oil and gas monopoly Naftogaz.
Non-EU members
Norway, a non-E.U. member, can also provide some advice to Ukraine on strengthening its ties with the 28-union economic and political bloc.
“We are strengthening our dialogue with Ukraine on… deepening the relationship with the E.U. while still being outside,” he said. “We have a lot of experience from the 25 years” of trade and political association agreement.
There will be a meeting held in Oslo in June between the two countries’ government officials. Norway and Ukraine also initiated cooperation between their education and health ministries. For example, Norway will be providing technical help on issues regarding trauma counseling and rehabilitation for those affected by Russia’s war in Donbas.
