journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

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Hans-Otto Frøland
percent. In 1949 only about twenty-four per cent of the registered fishermen had fishing
as their sole source of income. Although the proportion of such fishermen increased to
fifty percent in 1971, seen together the majority of the Norwegian farmers and fishermen
earned part of their incomes from other activities. Estimates in the 1960s indicated
that the incomes of about twenty-five per cent of the population were mainly derived
from the primary sector. Due to this, there were few major conflicts in the rural areas,
and, in agreement with the basic insight from the domestic-constraints perspective, the
dominant cleavage provoked by the issue of membership in the EC was between urban
centres and rural peripheries. Hence, it was wise of politicians to sell both agricultural
and fisheries policies to the public as regional policy aimed at retaining a dispersed population
in the rural areas. The underpinning for the strong position of the primary sector
is well described by the frustration expressed by ministers of Trade, Arne Skaug, and
Industry, Kjell Holler, when in a joint meeting with the head of the industrial association
in 1959 and after openly declaring their common desire to change the country's agricultural
policy, “stated, not really breaking new ground, that this was a very delicate
matter which no political party wished to touch”. 37 The government simply dared not
risk rapid restructuring because it could topple the agrarian compromise originally
struck in 1935.
The authorities resisted any international effort to liberalise the primary sector
in the 1950s. Difficulties in the balance of payments formed the recurrent argument
used when liberalisation efforts commenced in the OEEC. The rationale used for
resistance to the proposed European Agricultural Community between 1951 and
1954 was also the negative effects on the balance of payments. 38 Not until 1958 did
protectionism become the official reason for sheltering agriculture. 39 During the
1950s the argument that climatic and structural conditions called for permanent
protection gained prominence. This was used when the governments rejected Danish
efforts to include agriculture in a Nordic preference area, as well as when Norway
supported Great Britain's proposition to keep agriculture out of a possible free
trade area among the OEEC member-States (henceforth referred to as FTA). The
next section shows that this argument was also used to justify unconditional demands
that Norway's primary sector was to be exempted from Community regulations
in case of accession to the EEC.
Similar protection was actively claimed in fishery. After the Geneva negotiations,
in 1960, failed to yield a satisfactory outcome, Norway unilaterally extended
its fishing zone from about four to twelve nautical miles in 1961. The move was regarded
necessary to maintain a dispersed population in Northern Norway, where
still in 1970 the employment of about forty per cent of the population depended
upon coastal fisheries. The unilateral extension implied that foreign nationals, who
37. RA, PNI, box 1656, Minutes, meeting of Monrad Aas, President, with Arne Skaug and Kjell Holler,
15 September 1959.
38. H. ESPELI, Norway and the Green Pool, in: Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol.19, 1994,
pp.327-347.
39. H. ESPELI, Jordbruksproteksjonisme og handelspolitikk [Agricultural protection and trade policies],
Ås 1992, pp.131-166.