The EU is a revolutionary project led by the established Central European elite in Germany and France. It is a risky project. The West’s future security, prosperity and position in the global community are at stake. The West is in the process of being divided into different spheres of interest.
The contours of such a split, with Germany and France on one side and Italy and the Eastern European EU countries on the other, and with the UK and the US as a third Atlantic axis, are becoming increasingly clear. Which side the Nordic Region chooses has not yet been finalised.
With Brexit on 31 January 2020, the UK left the EU. With Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2025, the US made it clear that the political distance between Brussels and Washington has become at least as great as the distance across the Atlantic.
While Italy welcomed the rebuke from the US, it came as a shock to the political elites in France and Germany. For the time being, the war in Ukraine is helping to keep discipline in the EU ranks. However, the disintegration of the EU has been visible for a long time.
With France in the driving seat, France and Germany have traditionally been the engine of the EU. Germany has now given in to Macron’s demands for an accelerated centralisation of the EU, just as Helmut Kohl once bowed to François Mitterand’s pressure to introduce the euro as the common currency in 1999.
Germany has agreed to Macron’s ambitious plan for even closer integration and centralised governance. But while Kohl and Mitterand included Italy, Italy’s right-wing government under Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia is now excluded from the “good company” in Paris and Berlin.
Italy, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has taken a leading role in a growing rebellion against the Franco-German axis of the EU. Italy is supported by several member states, primarily the Eastern European ones, while the Nordic EU countries have been more reticent.
Meloni has brought together a coalition of states such as Hungary, Poland, Austria, Serbia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. They are critical of immigration policy, energy policy, identity politics and the centralisation of power in the Brussels bureaucracy.
There have long been divisions in the EU along the north/south axis over economic policy. Immigration and the EU’s supranational ambitions at the expense of member states’ national sovereignty have intensified the polarisation.
Denmark, Sweden and Finland have so far stayed out of the fray and refrained from directly challenging the Franco-German axis. However, this may be a matter of time, as popular protest against immigration and EU bureaucracy is also growing in our neighbouring countries.
The Sweden Democrats and True Finns have become the second-largest parties in Sweden and Finland respectively, with over 20% of the vote, while the Danish People’s Party, the Danish Democrats and Nye Borgerlige have roughly the same level of support in Denmark.
In Germany, AfD, with just over 20% of the vote, has also become the second largest party, and in France, Marine Le Pen and Rassemblement National are lurking in the shadows ahead of the 2027 election.
The divisive trends in Europe are a result of both historical fault lines and new realities. The UK and US have both abandoned them. And Italy and the Eastern European EU countries are in revolt, revealing deep economic and ideological divides that are finding increasing support in the rest of Europe.
The government and parliament have bought into this EU narrative. They want to keep the war going, and similarly blame Putin and Trump for the many self-inflicted crises, while representing EU membership as the solution
But it’s not primarily Putin’s fault that we have record-high electricity prices. And it’s not Trump’s fault that we no longer have an adequate defence. Neither Putin nor Trump can be blamed for the fact that large parts of industry in Europe have moved to China and that soup queues are getting longer in Berlin. And neither Putin nor Trump has caused the immigration crisis that is sweeping Europe and Norway like a tide. The European political elite have done that themselves.
This denial of reality is accompanied by deep delusions and excuses when it comes to the country’s security environment and our fundamental economic and trade policy interests.
In the schism now unfolding in the West, with Germany and France on one side, the US and the UK on the other, and Italy and the Eastern European EU countries as an alternative phalanx in the EU, it is important to understand our surroundings. It is not a given that an EU led by Germany and France are our natural allies, as the Conservative and Labour parties seem to lean towards.
The urban political elite in Norway has made the wrong choice before. They manoeuvred around the popular majority, which in 1972 and 1994 said no to the EU, and instead got Norway into the EU through the EEA Agreement. Now they are using the war in Ukraine, Putin and Trump for all it’s worth to scare voters into an EU under German and French leadership. The Conservative Party’s national conference has just voted (22 March) for Norway to work for the fastest possible membership of the EU, which was welcomed by Ap, V and MDG.
EU membership for Norway could prove fateful for several reasons.
Firstly, because popular opposition to the EU’s accelerated integration and centralisation policy, immigration policy and climate and energy policy will not diminish. Rather, it is likely to increase in strength in Norway, as in our neighbouring countries and in the rest of Europe.
The electorate and silent majority in Norway, which voted against EU membership in 1972 and 1994, objectively has more in common with the growing opposition to the EU in our neighbouring countries and elsewhere in Europe than it does with the central political elites in the EU.
Secondly, because Norway is a virtually pure commodity economy and exporter of raw materials, with partly conflicting trade policy interests in relation to the EU, which is first and foremost an importer of raw materials and producer of finished goods. If the exchange of goods took place on equal terms, it would be fine, but that is not the case.
Through the harmonisation of the single market, the EU seeks to gain control over our natural resources. This applies to hydropower, gas, fishery resources and other raw materials – at the lowest possible price and on the most favourable terms for the EU. Contrary to the EU’s own internal market principles, the EU seeks in this way to set the market aside in favour of its own regulations. This is not in Norway’s interest.
And thirdly: In terms of security policy, Norway belongs first and foremost in the Euro-Atlantic space, together with the US and the UK, with whom we share geopolitical and military strategic interests to a far greater extent than the continental powers of Germany and France.
Geopolitically and militarily, Norway and the Fennoscandian peninsula should be regarded as an island. Norway can only receive allied military support of any scale by sea, and for all practical purposes only from the US and the UK.
At the same time, Norway, and to some extent the Nordic region, is a buffer between the superpowers Russia and the US, and an advanced defence perimeter for the US and the UK, and especially for the US in terms of superpower rivalry with Russia.</p
Norway’s proximity to Russia’s strategic second-tier fleet on the Kola Peninsula, our vast maritime territory and location with regard to control of the North Atlantic and the gateway to the Arctic Ocean, our location directly under the paths of the intercontinental nuclear missiles aimed at population centres in the west of Russia and on the east coast of the US respectively, means that we are vulnerable to becoming an object of the interests of the great powers, while at the same time having a natural security community with the US.
The developments in transatlantic relations are thus worrying. The US clearly sees China as a growing threat, while at the same time major and important geopolitical changes are taking place on and around the American continent.
But Trump and the US do not want to abolish the European state system, undermine the sovereignty of states, elected institutions, the separation of powers in the state and overturn key norms and values. The US remains the voice of traditional Western values, the rule of law, democracy, freedom of religion, speech and the press.
Listen to what J.D. Vance actually said in Munich, rather than what his statements were interpreted as by a hysterical and narrative-driven European press.
The US does not want to abolish NATO, but wants the European NATO countries to take greater responsibility for their own security and their proportionate share of the common defence burden. The European NATO countries are a force multiplier for the US in the same way that the US is a force multiplier for the European NATO countries.
Germany and France should clearly upgrade, but they can neither replace Norway’s need for shielding under the US nuclear umbrella nor come close to matching the US, Russia and China conventionally.
Betting on an EU defence to replace the US and NATO ignores the fact that the individual security needs of EU countries are largely regional and highly diverse. To believe that Portugal will send soldiers to defend Finnmark shows how far removed the EU elite has become from the fundamental security realities of Europe.
Trump and the US don’t want reduced trade with Europe either, but for the EU to harmonise its tariffs and not discriminate against US goods imports. This is no more difficult or incomprehensible than what Trump believes to be perfectly legitimate demands in trade between allies.
What we need to realise in Norway, once the Trump fog and the fog of war in Ukraine have subsided, is that the US and Russia will be the key players in the North Atlantic, the Arctic Ocean and in our own neighbourhood. Together and separately, both are major powers and key players in the geopolitics of global energy and the leading exporters of oil and gas.
Norway does not have the option of siding with one without the other as a secure ally, let alone allying with others (the EU) against the US and Russia. Norway belongs in the Euro-Atlantic community with the US and UK as our closest allies.
When we now see a rapprochement in US-Russia relations, we should not be surprised but welcome it, both because it can contribute to peace in Europe and because a normalisation in US-Russia relations is the best environment Norway can imagine, as a consequence of our common border with Russia and our coinciding security interests with the US.
We are unable to guarantee such a normalisation in relations between the great powers ourselves, but have all the less reason to ally ourselves with others when it occurs. Such an approach could allow for independent Norwegian European diplomacy and could make it significantly easier to safeguard Norwegian resources and secure the country’s future income than an EU membership led by Germany and France.
Norway’s sovereignty over Svalbard is particularly exposed. We have no allies in the EU when it comes to defending our rights on the Svalbard shelf. Quite the opposite, in fact. They are all looking for access to the mineral and fishing deposits there. China is investing ever more heavily in Svalbard. Even Turkey is now considering establishing itself on Svalbard.
And we don’t want to alienate the US and pave the way for a possible horse trade between the US and Russia where Greenland is incorporated into the US sphere of influence and Svalbard is left to the Russians. On the contrary, we want to be on the same side as the US, among other things to safeguard continued Norwegian sovereignty on Svalbard.
The disintegration tendencies in the EU are striking. Globalisation policies have undermined the EU’s economic prospects. The political and ideological dividing lines are becoming increasingly clear among 27 member states with widely divergent national interests. In terms of defence, the EU currently has nothing to offer.
In terms of economic and trade policy, Norway should not seek membership of the EU, but rather renegotiate the EEA Agreement and possibly replace it with a bilateral trade agreement with the EU, as we had previously.
In terms of security policy, Norway should not seek membership of the EU.
In terms of security policy, Norway should first and foremost rebuild its own defence capability and then help to strengthen defence and security policy cooperation in NATO, with an emphasis on the US and UK and the Nordic NATO countries as our main allies.
Just as Norway can best secure control over its own resources through a bilateral trade agreement with the EU, and not through full membership of the EU, which will necessarily take place on the EU’s terms, Norway’s security policy is best served by NATO membership and US security guarantees as far as possible on Norwegian terms.
This entails a strong national defence and security policy.
This implies a strong national defence combined with US security guarantees alongside the self-imposed security restrictions that contributed to low tension and served us so well during the Cold War without US bases on Norwegian soil.
Øystein Steiro Sr.