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Choosing the Periphery 91
had traditionally fished inside the twelve-mile coastal zone would be excluded after
a transition period. Only because the 1964 London convention on European fisheries,
which accommodated Norwegian interests by codifying in international law a
fishing zone of twelve nautical miles, allowed these foreign fishermen to maintain
their traditional fishing in the zone between six and twelve miles, did Norway not
ratify the London convention. Fears that the Norwegian position would hurt fish export,
including the favourable EFTA-clause on frozen fish to Great Britain, counted
less than maintaining the preferential fishing regulations. The Norwegian negotiator
was instructed not even to accept specific parts of Norwegian waters being covered
by the London convention. 40 Norway's expansive and rigid fishing-limit policy
bears witness to the strong position of the fisheries sector in the core of Norway's
political economy.
III. The Community Seen as a Challenge
Never had the Norwegian authorities been so afraid of the tariff union as in
1957-58. In the autumn of 1957, Trade minister Skaug reported on the threat to
Norwegian export interests if France and Italy were to succeed in forcing the establishment
of a “high-tariff union”, which would develop into “a policy of self-sufficiency
of quite considerable scope”. 41 This fear eventually applied to the tariff rates
that were not determined by the Treaty of Rome, but which in accordance with List
G were to be negotiated at a later stage. The government estimated that sixty-two
per cent of Norwegian export revenues in 1956 came from export commodities
under this category.
The grounds for the fear of the tariff union may be illustrated by the Norwegian
aluminium plan. Due to the lack of capital, the government had slowed down the
pace of industrialisation in the long-term programme for the 1954-57 period. But it
subsequently geared up the pace of development for 1958-61. In 1938, Norway had
produced 29,000 tonnes of aluminium. Production had risen to 93,000 tonnes in
1956. Plans now called for extending the capacity to 250,000-300,000 tonnes by
the end of the 1960s, which would make Norway the decidedly largest producer in
Europe. 42 Needless to say, the Government was uncertain as to whether the EEC
would create difficulties for these plans, and the opportunity for reaching long-term
agreements was thus a primary concern during two meetings in 1958 between Gus-
40. Stortingsarkivet, Oslo [The Parliamentary Archives] (henceforth, SA), Stortingets utvidede utenriks-og
konstitusjonskomite [The Parliament's Extended Foreign Policy and Constitutional Committee]
(henceforth, SUUKK), Minutes of 4 March 1964, p. 12. The SUUKK was an informal
committee in which the government informed the parliament on delicate matters, thus helping to
establish the necessary parliamentary consensus on foreign policy.
41. SA, SUUKK, Minutes of 14 July 1957, p.13.
42. E. BROFOSS, De økonomiske integrasjonsplanene i Europa [The Economic Integration Plans in
Europe], Oslo, 1958, p.18.