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Norway to hit ‘two percent’ NATO target ahead of schedule

Norway, whose neighbour Russia is now "more dangerous and more unpredictable", will reach NATO's two-percent spending target this year, two years earlier than expected, the prime minister said on Thursday.

Published: 14 March 2024 13:57 CET
Pictured is the Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Søre
Norway will hit the two percent target for NATO members. File phot: Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store addresses a joint press conference in 2024. (Photo by Wojtek Radwanski / AFP)

The 2024 defence budget, initially expected to be around 8.0 billion euros ($8.75 billion), will be revised upwards in the spring budget bill, Jonas Gahr Støre said after meeting opposition leaders.

The Labour prime minister did not provide any detailed figures but said his country would this year reach the target set for NATO members, under which they are expected to dedicate at least two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to military spending.

“Russia has no interest in a military conflict with a NATO member,” Store said. “But we will likely have to cope for a long time with a more dangerous and more unpredictable neighbour, Russia.”

The Scandinavian country was a founding member of NATO in 1949 and shares a 198-kilometre (123-mile) border with Russia in the Far North.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a backdrop, Norway’s minority government will also present a white paper on April 5th outlining its defence plans for 2025-2028.

“Norway poses a threat to no-one,” Støre stressed. “It’s not a plan (to provoke) a conflict, it’s a plan to avoid conflicts.”

NATO is currently holding Nordic Response exercises in northern Europe, involving around 20,000 soldiers.

They include Swedish troops taking part for the first time since Sweden formally joining the transatlantic military alliance last week.

On Wednesday, another Scandinavian country, Denmark, said it would raise its defence spending by $5.9 billion over five years to boost its military capacity, pushing it past NATO’s spending target from this year.

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POLITICS

Norway’s government plans to introduce age limit for social media

Age limit rules that require electronic identification will be introduced for social media users in Norway, the country’s PM Jonas Gahr Støre said Tuesday.

Published: 3 July 2024 11:56 CEST
Norway’s government plans to introduce age limit for social media

Norway’s government, in the autumn, will set an age limit for social media use in the Nordic country, Jonas Gahr Støre has pledged.

“We must get an age limit that we can enforce. And we have to get stricter regulation of functionality and content that is obviously harmful to children,” he told public broadcaster NRK.

The exact age at which users will need to be to log into social media in Norway has not been determined yet, but the limit will be strictly enforced through the use of electronic identification to verify the user’s age.

The PM also said that the government would ensure that content aimed at children and young people would be regulated more strictly, with these rules also applying to things like autoplay and algorithms.

“We are facing challenges that we cannot solve alone. It is a task for politics to address this,” Støre said.

A platform for electronic identification has yet to be clarified. However, e-IDs are fairly widespread in Norway and are issued by both the public and private sectors.

The Norwegian Data Protection Authority and Norwegian Consumer Council have previously criticised the proposal to use a digital identification system to limit who can access social media.

“Age verification challenges the basic rights children have, such as the right to participate, freedom of expression and information gathering,” Inger Lise Blyverket, director of the Norwegian Consumer Council, told the newspaper Klassekampen in May.

Meanwhile, the data protection authority said that those who do not have access to an electronic ID may have to choose more obscure and possibly unsafe platforms.

The Children’s Ombudsman expressed scepticism that an age limit can solve the challenges children face regarding social media and pointed out that most social media already have a recommended age limit.

Even when the government begins with its plans to introduce an age limit for social media in the autumn it still currently isn’t clear when the regulations would actually be introduced.

According to an opinion poll from the data analysis firm Opinion, a majority of Norwegians are in favour of introducing an age limit for social media use.

A majority of the parties in Norway’s parliament are also in favour of introducing restrictions.

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