At the back of the line

The Stoltenberg Committee has presented a report on global health in which they sound the alarm about Norway's lack of pandemic preparedness: A recent Lancet report estimates a 23 percent probability that we will have another pandemic as severe as covid-19 within the next ten years.

Nevertheless, the Health Minister Jan Christian Vestre says to nrk.no that he is optimistic and believes we are better equipped now than when the corona pandemic hit.

But this is wrong. Because the truth is that we risk being left without our most important defense — vaccines.

I don't know how many people remember It, but the fact that we got quick access to vaccines during the covid pandemic was more luck than strategy. When the pandemic was at its worst, and the fight for vaccines was great, Norway had no agreement that would ensure vaccines for us.

Instead, there was a pro-actively and solidly Swede, and a subsequent tweet from Ursula von der Leyen, which came to our rescue, and allowed us to nevertheless be included in the EU procurement scheme. It was not a foregone conclusion.

The best that Norway can do to ensure that we have access to necessary vaccines in future crises, is to become a member of the EU's Health Union, which among other things coordinates vaccine distribution.

The government has understood this and has now been working for over a year for us to gain membership. But the negotiations drag on and we are far away from reaching the finish line.

A major reason for this delay is that Norway fails to meet its obligations under the EEA Agreement.

Norway has a significant backlog of different EEA regulations that should have been introduced into Norwegian law a long time ago.

There are several unpopular things on this list. The oldest backlog is the regulation on genetically modified food (GMO) and feed, which should have been introduced more than 20 years ago.

Government tries to blame EFTA neighbour Iceland for the fact that the process is still not finished, but the truth is that GMO conservative Norway in no way wants this regulation because then we will get dozens more GMO products (feed for livestock) into the country.

Then Norway can no longer boast of its (miscast) image as one of the world's last GMO-free countries and close the border to goods that provide (economically beneficial) competition on the Norwegian market.

The result is symbolic politics that stands in the way of our own safety. The government should take responsibility and clean up this bureaucratic mess, so that Norway can become part of the EU health community. Because the consequences can be serious:

If a new pandemic strikes before we reach the end of the negotiations on the EU Health Union, we risk ending up at the back of the vaccine queue, on par with countries in the Global South.

Then we will be sitting there in home isolation while our vaccinated European neighbours have resumed their daily lives. We will have to live with tens of thousands of Norwegian lives and billions of Norwegian kroner being needlessly lost.

We will have an even greater pressure on the health service than what we experienced during the covid pandemic. And even more lost childhood and social outsidership.

In return, you can feel absolutely certain that the salmon on your plate has not eaten GMO feed!

The Norwegian people deserve better than symbolic politics and a false sense of security. We need protection when the next pandemic occurs, and that can be done with a bureaucratic stroke of a pen.

It's urgent -- the government needs to start cleaning up.