Cameron: "I think it is worth understanding what leaving would involve – there is the
Norway option. You can be like Norway – and you can have full access to the
single market but you have absolutely no say over the rules of that market. In Norway they sometimes call it ‘Government by fax’ because you are simply
taking the instructions about every rule in the single market from Brussels
without any say on what those rules are."
It was
Witterings from Witney that alerted me via email to this
Newsnight programme on Wednesday (copy going on youtube later today) in particular this comment (32:12) from
Helle Hagenau, who worked as Secretary General in Norway's No to EU in 2001:
“No, we are not governed by fax because
the European agreement, the single market agreement, that has a clause
when we can veto a directive if we don’t like it; and we have done
that.”
In one simple sentence one of the long running and best known EU arguments for remaining members has been nailed for the lie that it is, yet the comment, dynamite as it is, seems hitherto have passed by unnoticed by a large number of euroscpetics.
Witterings has the
details which is worth reading in full, the key one is this from
the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (6.1.4) - the right of veto:
“According to the principle of unanimity
applied in the EEA Joint Committee, all the EFTA states must agree in
order for new EU legislation to be integrated into the EEA Agreement and
for it to apply to cooperation between the EFTA states and the EU. If
one EFTA state opposes integration, this also affects the other EFTA
states in that the rules will not apply to them either, neither in the
individual states nor between the EFTA states themselves nor in their
relations with the EU. This possibility that each EFTA state has to
object to new rules that lie within the scope of the EEA Agreement
becoming applicable to the EFTA pillar is often referred to as these
parties’ right of veto.”
In short if Norway doesn't like the fax it receives it can simply file it in the bin. Cameron has been exposed as a liar, and his key argument against a 'Norway solution' has been comprehensively holed below the waterline.
"Government by fax" is a wholly inaccurate yet powerful soundbite, but now we have powerful soundbite in response - "that's a lie, Norway has a veto".
The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Edit: I've uploaded the relevant clip
here:
