Why Norway option is a no-brainer – it is not too late for May to change tack

In his office at the Rue Varembé in Geneva, Henri Getaz, the secretary general of the European Free Trade Association, has a file tucked away in his desk ready for emergencies. The secret document is simply marked, and goes something like this: “Britain’s application to join EFTA.”

In the file, there is a timetable for if and when the UK decides to rejoin Efta. This is the four-nation trade alliance which includes Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, and of which Britain was a founder member in 1960. As well as its precisely prepared timings, the document includes a legal analysis of how an application to become a full member of Efta could be swiftly expedited.

Nothing has been left out, or to chance. It’s not that the Efta secretariat boss knows something that we don’t – that the UK is on the brink of joining – but that he wants to be ready and welcoming should the UK so decide.

Getaz, a Swiss national and former ambassador who took on the top role earlier this year, was typically circumspect in a recent interview when he said: “The question {of the UK joining} is not on the agenda until further notice. But if the British decide to do so, the Efta states would consider it.”

Interestingly, Getaz also emphasised how the UK is Efta’s third biggest market, with total trade of E70bn, “so the interests are enormous to all parties.”

That’s code, says one diplomatic source close to Efta. He explains: “They have a plan for everything. That’s the way Efta works: the secretariat has worked on this for months, if not ever since the UK leave vote. The four countries have all been prepped and will have been having bilateral talks with the UK.”

Indeed, the Icelandic Foreign Minister has warmly and publicly signalled that Efta would welcome the UK as a member.

While some commentators have said in the past that Norway wouldn’t want the UK to join EFTA, it  seems the Norwegians have also warmed up to the notion to UK membership.

Recently, Norway’s Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, quite correctly pointed out that the UK supporters of Efta membership would be politic to drop the ‘Then Canada bit’ from their latest ‘Norway for Now’ campaign.

The UK is Norway’s biggest trading partner, not least because of its vast gas exports. It would clearly benefit Norway to have an closer trading relationship with the UK after Brexit.

But the crucial point is that Efta has all the documentation ready to move fast, should the UK decide to pursue this option. And that’s the $64,000 question. Is the time now ripe for the UK to accept that the most viable – and arguably most fruitful – route out of this Brexit chaos is to stay in the European Economic Area, of which we are still a contracting member country, and then join Efta?

Or is it too late for what’s now commonly called, the Norway option? Or is it correct, as Prime Minister Theresa May keeps warning, that we are faced with a binary choice. That either we accept her latest fudge or it is the cliff-hanger of no deal? Even she, though, has introduced a third option in a matter of days with a totally new spin: her ‘no Brexit’ threat.

Nonsense, say the legal experts, it is not too late to take the Nordic path. And they claim the Prime Minister is wrong to say there are no alternatives to her fudge.

So are an increasing number of MPs. Taking the Viking route has been gaining ground for months and now has backing of an interesting group of cross-party MPs ranging from Labour’s Frank Field to the newest convert, and cheerleader, the Conservative MP, Nick Boles. (Oddly enough, even Nigel Farage spoke warmly about the Norway Option before the referendum).

More to the point, the legal experts point out that the PM’s latest Withdrawal Agreement is only an outline political declaration and that, should it be passed by the Commons, there is still scope for the government to switch tack and pursue the EEA/Efta option. One Efta campaigner added: “People are getting confused. We are still not at the stage of a ‘deal.’ We are only at the beginning of negotiations. There is plenty of time to get this right.”

This is why. Professor George Yarrow, the Oxford don who is now considered godfather to the Norway route, reminds us that the EEA Agreement is an international ratified treaty which was signed up to by the UK, (at Porto, Portugal 1992) and one which will stay in place automatically, after March 29 next year.

Yarrow says: “There is no ambiguity about this treaty. We have not given notice to quit the EEA, and therefore under international law, (the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties sits above the EU’s institutions) we will remain so after March 29.”

He adds the EU would have to force us out if it wanted us to quit, something that is exceedingly difficult to do under the treaty as there are no provisions either in the EEA or EU treaties that say withdrawing from one means you are withdrawing from the other.

Yarrow started looking at alternatives to soft or hard Brexit the day after the vote in June 2016. The Professor is from Sunderland and most of his family still live there. “Once I saw the Sunderland result – one of the highest leave votes in the country – I knew there had to be another way of doing this. So I got working.”

The result is that Yarrow says we should tell the EU and the EEA out of courtesy that we would like to stay on as EEA members, and then ask to apply immediately for Efta membership. The benefits of Efta are huge, he says, and pragmatic. It also solves many of the latest problems that have resulted in what he calls the ‘tub of lard” from the Prime Minister.

First off, by staying in the single market, the UK would be able to navigate tricky issues as the handling of the Irish border with greater ease than the current complex backstop.

It’s a view backed by a recent report from the lobbying group, EFTA4UK, which claims the solution to the Irish border problem is a hybrid one made up of some existing agreements, some new systems and an ambitious new UK-EU customs partnership.

It points to the experience of how the Norwegians and Swedes (both in the EEA) manage to have about 80% of all their trade classified as ‘frictionless’ despite their 1,000 mile border, one made up of mainly granite rock and pine trees. Most of the customs checks on the Nordic border are carried out electronically, although there are still some border controls for certain goods such as alcohol.

But that’s changing rapidly. Modern technology is about to revolutionise how customs checks at ports and border posts operate. Efta4UK has done the research, and shows there are several new initiatives being worked on by the EU and the UK which will transform how we handle customs controls, and which should, over the next few years allow almost all trading to be frictionless.

For example, the EU is spending millions of euros on developing two new hi-tech electronic customs programmes, Customs 2020 and UCC, while the UK is working on a new CDS Customs project, to operate across borders and at our ports. According to efta4UK, these new cutting edge systems should resolve most of the remaining border customs issues, hopefully within the transitional period to December 2020.

As well as helping solve the Irish border issue, staying in the EEA also means the UK can opt out of the agriculture and fisheries agreements and the European Court of Justice, working instead with the EFTA court. It would also allow the UK to make its own Free Trade Agreements – something that is not possible within the PM’s current proposal. Iceland, for example, has its own trade agreement with China as an independent sovereign nation.

And the billion pound annual payments? They would stop. The Efta countries have a reciprocal arrangement with the EU whereby they pay for certain services such as the Erasmus university exchange scheme or for healthcare.

But there is one big sticking point to the Norway option, and it’s possibly the red-line which stopped the PM and the diehard Brexiteers from considering the EEA/Efta option as a credible alternative before looking at it in more detail.

By staying in the single market, the UK would have to accept the stickiest of the four founding principles: that of freedom of labour.

Yet Yarrow believes there are legal ways for the UK to negotiate brakes or controls on the numbers of EU citizens coming to the UK under existing rules.

These are covered in Article 28 of the EEA Agreement which allows for countries to apply restrictions on grounds of public health, public security and public policy, in addition Article 112 would allow an unilateral emergency brake on migration if the UK needed it.  Liechtenstein, for example, has been allowed a de facto break on people coming across its borders on the grounds of its size, and in order to protect its unique identity and character.

What’s more, Yarrow points out that the text of the Treaty of Rome – the founding treaty of the EEC – with regard to labour mobility is wide open to interpretation, and could be open to legal challenge. You only have to look at what is happening in Germany and on the borders of Austria, Hungary and Italy to see how the attitudes to greater migration are hardening the public’s attitude to immigration.

More pertinently, the British government could be far more rigorous about applying the tools already at its disposal under Directive 2004/38/EC which allows countries to be tough about the conditions under which EU citizens can travel to each other’s countries. This provides strict rules on work and benefits which our Dutch and Belgian neighbours follow to the letter but the UK does not.

Whether the Prime Minister gets her deal through the Commons or not, or whoever might take over from her, the EEA/Efta option is not only a credible alternative but a highly attractive one which keeps us with our European partners yet not locked into the EU’s political project. There’s a certain symmetry to joining up with the two Nordic nations with which we share so much history and culture and two Alpine ones which, like the UK, tend to sit on the edge of continental Europe yet are so intrinsically part of its heritage. As Yarrow says, the world is dynamic and trading relations are never static. If we were to join Efta, who knows where it might lead. In one stroke, Efta becomes a bigger and freer trading block, an Efta 2.0 type trading organisation, as the bloc’s population would increase from 14m to 80m, it gains a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, the world’s fifth biggest economy together with its most important financial centre. Who knows, Efta can then start inviting other countries like Canada to come on board.