Don’t do the Norway model, Norway tells Britain

OSLO — Andy Burnham has been warned by Norway’s leader not to seek to emulate his country’s EU relationship ahead of a summit with European leaders. In a POLITICO interview, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said he would not recommend the model his country has with the EU to Britain, because the two economies are so different. Norway, with a population of 5.6 million, is a member of the EU single market through the European Economic Area (EEA) but is not a fully fledged EU member state — and therefore has no voting rights over the bloc’s commercial rules. “There’s an obvious democratic deficit in it, but pragmatically, all [Norwegian] Parliaments since 1995 have said this is a reasonable way of doing it,” Støre said.

“I don’t see Britain do that. I don’t see Canada do that.” The U.K. and Canada are both in the process of seeking closer ties to the bloc of 27 countries, which the U.K. voted to leave a decade ago.

Burnham has said in the long term he wants to see the U.K. rejoin — and is aiming to scope ideas for better trade terms later this month at a summit with EU leaders.