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Choosing the Periphery 93
ducers in other parts of Western Europe also expressed their scepticism to a likely
Scandinavian monopoly in wood processing. 46 The fear that the EEC would
demand special schemes for traditional Norwegian export goods had a restraining
effect on the Norwegians. Due to the strong political position of France among the
Six Norway could not even consider submitting counter-demands for special
schemes to protect its own industry.
The strategy opted for was to open the protected industry and restructure it into an
export industry in order to “compensate for the decline that – as the Norwegian minister
of Trade had accepted already at the beginning of 1957 – we must assume will occur in
the domestic industry”. 47 The idea of a real threat led the government to conclude that
the relatively slow pace of industrial growth was caused by protection and that the time
for liberalisation of the protected industry had now arrived. In the long-term programme
for 1958-60, the government upgraded the modernisation plan for the domestic
industry. 48 Conceptualised as regional policy, a set of funds for developing and restructuring
industry in the rural areas were established. The main worry of the
government with respect to this restructuring strategy was not a political one, as the fear
of a tariff union made both the Industrial Association and the trade union movement endorse
this policy. The problem was the lack of capital. The government worried that the
transition to convertibility in 1959 would make it even harder to obtain capital. 49 In
1957 the minister of Trade had leaned towards defending free capital mobility inside a
future free trade area, but he obviously had doubts. As stated before, this would lead to
a net capital loss and thus threaten the existing credit regulation policy. Hence capital
would need to be obtained in other ways.
The gravest worry concerned the status agriculture and fisheries would receive
in the free trade area. Norway was the only country to support Great Britain's original
demand to keep agriculture outside the free trade area. The minister of Trade
stated that if Norway was forced to yield on the issue of agriculture, the issue
would be “whether in the end we would join or not”. 50 Furthermore, in 1957, Norway
appeared as a defender of the British imperial preferences. However, this
stance was not without problems. The British initially wished to exclude the commodity-trade
groups 1-24, to use the Brussels nomenclature. Norway wished to define
a number of these commodities as processed goods and thus have them included
in the free-trade scheme, including frozen fish, canned goods, fatty acids, etc.
46. RA, PNI, box 1659, Memorandum by the paper-producers associations of Germany, Belgium,
Great Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands, 9 May 1958.
47. SA, SUUKK, Minutes of 7 February 1957, p.8.
48. St.m. No.6, 1959-60, “Om utbygging av industri i distriktene” [On Developing Industry in the
Districts].
49. On policy towards the British convertibility plans, cf. RA, Finansdepartementet [Finance Department],
C-2-3, Uniscan, box 61, Memorandum by the Norwegian Delegation to the 7th Session of
the Anglo-Scandinavian Economic Committee in Oslo 23-24 January 1953, 15 January 1953; on
policy towards the introduction of general convertibility on current account, cf. RA, Handelsdepartementet
[Trade Department], Valutaavdelingen [Currency Division], box 302, Memo on the
problems of convertibility, 30 September 1955.
50. SA, SUUKK, Minutes of 6 September 1957, p.5.