The session of the Nordic Council will be held in Reykjavík from October 27 to 31.
mbl.is/Brynjar Gauti
The session of the Nordic Council will be held in Reykjavík from October 27 to 31. Bryndís Haraldsdóttir, president of the Nordic Council, says she does not believe that the upcoming parliamentary elections in this country and the election campaign related to them will affect the work of the parliament.
“I predict a strong and good parliament,” she says to Morgunblaðið.
Iceland”s presidency plan for the Nordic Council was presented at the Council’s session in Oslo last year under the title Peace and Security in the Arctic. Haraldsdóttir says that what has been the most sensitive this year and has taken the most time is finding a political landing on how to change the Helsingfors Agreement, which dates back to 1962 and is a kind of constitution of the Nordic Council. The Presidency of the Nordic Council has worked on a proposal for updating the agreement that stipulates how official Nordic cooperation should be conducted, where security issues will also be part of the agreement.
Nordic army?
“There is a strong consensus among the members of the Nordic countries to update the agreement and include security and defense issues that are not included for historical reasons,” Haraldsdóttir says.
“The agreement deals with the aspects where we want to have strong cooperation. There have been no security and defense issues. Members of Parliament have, however, agreed on a policy on social security issues and want to increase that cooperation. And now we see the great interest of the Nordic parliamentarians in strong cooperation in the field of security and defense. Many meetings and seminars have been held on this, both at the level of the Nordic Council and our other partners. I have mentioned that I think there is a great need for strong Nordic cooperation in the field of security and defense and that at some point we may be looking at a Nordic army. My speech has received mixed reactions, but it is clear that we are seeing increased cooperation between the Nordic armies, especially the air forces, in purchases, exercises and other external matters. I don’t think it’s far-fetched that we will see closer cooperation in that area.”
How would demilitarized Iceland come to that cooperation?
“I have answered the question in such a way that the Nordic armies may open their doors to Icelandic citizens. The Norwegian and Danish armies have done that. Only citizens of those countries may be in the Swedish and Finnish armies. I’m not speaking for the Icelandic army, but I think the situation in the world is such that we really need to think about our security and defense issues, and then I’m also thinking about the wider context of things. Security in the Arctic is of many kinds, such as food security, telecommunications security, communication security, and we face all kinds of challenges due to climate change and melting ice. The idea of increased cooperation is therefore also about these aspects, social security.”
Want full membership
Mute B. Egede, the Prime Minister of the Greenland Home Rule, declared earlier this year that he would not participate in the upcoming meetings of the Nordic Council to protest that the Nordic Council does not want to agree to Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands gaining full membership in the Council.
Aksel V. Johannesen, attorney for the Faroe Islands, has also emphasized that the Faroe Islands will receive full membership in the council and that the Faroe Islands want to take an active part in the defense cooperation of the Nordic countries. These two countries have two representatives each in the Nordic Council at the invitation of Denmark, but are not full members and do not have a seat in the Council’s Presidency.
Haraldsdóttir says that this is a complicated issue, but she has previously said that she hopes that it will be possible to take a step in this direction at the Reykjavík Parliament. She says that she went with Oddný Harðardóttir, the vice-president of the Nordic Council, to Greenland to hear the voice of the Greenlanders and to try to convince Egede to change his mind and get him to come to the parliament in Reykjavík.
“He hasn’t given a definitive answer about that, but I’m going to be optimistic.” I know that Greenlandic members of parliament will attend and the Greenlandic foreign minister as well,” she says.
The sessions of the Nordic Council will be held in Reykjavík City Hall, while the committee meetings will be held in Smiðja, the Parliament’s new office building on Vonarstræti.
Haraldsdóttir says that international guests will attend the congress, including from Scotland, Germany and other countries. “It seems to me that the interest is considerable and I have seen this year that many countries are looking to the Nordic Council as a model for regional cooperation.