From ‘Awkward Partner’ to ‘Awkward Partnership’? Explaining Norway’s Paradoxical Relations with the European Union

Abstract

Norway is the only Nordic state to have rejected membership of the European Union four times. Applying the conceptual lens of ‘awkwardness’, as developed by Murray et al. (2014), it seems fair to consider the country as an awkward partner in the process of European integration. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), however, Norway has been tightly associated with the European Union ever since 1994, actively participating in a large number of EU policies and programs and effectively forging a close partnership that has in itself become increasingly ‘awkward’. This holds true despite the fact that successive Norwegian governments have recently started to embrace a generally more reserved attitude with regard to the EU, particularly in relation to the implementation of several EU directives. As a member of both Nordic and European cooperation, Norway aims at dissipating potential concerns for being perceived as awkward—despite the complexities created by its non-membership of the EU. We argue that Norwegian ‘awkwardness’ has resulted in an awkward’ relationship between Norway and the EU that is predominantly rooted in the domestic political sphere (relations between Norwegian political elites and the electorate, and among the political parties), although this has also been shaped by the EU’s incapacity to deal with a series of economic and political crises over the past few years.

*The authors are grateful to the comments by Alex Brianson, Tarvo Kungla, Benjamin Leruth, Malin McCallion Stegmann, Philomena Murray and Frode Veggeland as well as the participants of the panel on “Awkward States” at the UACES annual conferences in Bilbao, September 6–9, 2015 and London, September 5–7, 2016 as well as the international politics panel at the Norwegian Political Science Congress, Kristiansand, January 6–8, 2016.