Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide (H) has received confirmation from the EU Commission that the export of coronavirus vaccines to Norway will continue as before.
“I have today received confirmation from Commission President von der Leyen that vaccines will reach us in the usual way, from the EU to Norway via Sweden. There is thus no change for Norway,” Eriksen Søreide told news bureau NTB.
The statement comes after the EU Commission removed Norway from the list of countries that are exempt from the EU regulations for export control for vaccines against COVID-19.
EU removes Norway from exemption list for export of vaccines
On Wednesday, the European Commission removed Norway from the list of countries that are exempt from the rules for export control of vaccines.
Norway and 16 other countries are now included in the export control framework that the EU has introduced for vaccines against COVID-19.
At the same time, the EU Commission is tightening the export rules.
The new regulations stipulate that the member states and the European Commission must take two new considerations into account when exporting vaccines:
- Reciprocity: Does the recipient country have its own export restrictions for vaccines?
- Proportionality: Are conditions in the recipient country better or worse than in the EU?
The background for the tightening is what the EU perceives as an unfair distribution of vaccine doses between the EU and the UK. While the EU has allowed the export of ten million doses to the UK, the EU has not received anything in return.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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