Norway turns down Britain's request for free trade deal taskforce

Norway has turned down a request from Britain to set up a formal joint taskforce aimed at preparing a post-Brexit free trade deal between the two countries, Norwegian media have reported.

The business daily Dagens Næringsliv said the international trade minister, Liam Fox, asked Norway’s trade and industry minster, Monica Mæland, to form a bilateral trade working group at a meeting between the two ministers and their officials on 14 September.

The request was passed to the Norwegian foreign affairs ministry, which is coordinating Norway’s Brexit response, where it was rejected as likely to jeopardise Norway’s European Economic Area (EEA) agreement and “inappropriate” while Britain was still a full member of the EU, the paper said.

The rejection marks a second early setback for Fox’s department after Australia’s trade minister said last month that any formal work on a post-Brexit Australia-UK trade deal would take second place to trade talks with the EU, and anyway could not begin until Britain had fully exited from the bloc.

The international trade department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Norway is not a member of the EU but has access to the single market though its membership of the EEA, which groups EU member states plus three of the four members of the European Free Trade Association (Efta) – Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Norway has said it could block a UK bid for Efta membership. The European affairs minister, Elisabeth Vik Aspaker, said in August it was “not certain it would be a good idea to let a big country into this organisation. It would shift the balance, which is not necessarily in Norway’s interests.”

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, said: “This is the latest rebuff, this time from Norway, to the government that doesn’t have a plan or, frankly, have a clue.

“The Tory government is scrabbling around for even a scrap of good news while we charge headlong towards a hard Brexit. The Liberal Democrats are the real opposition to this Tory Brexit government.”

The “Norwegian model” had been held up by some pro-Brexit campaigners as a possible way for the UK to access the EU single market via the EEA, although the government’s insistence on controlling immigration and regaining parliamentary and judicial sovereignty after Brexit may rule that out: EEA membership requires the four EU freedoms, including the free movement of people.

Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, the leader of Norway’s Centre party, accused the Norwegian government of dragging its feet in response to the Brexit vote, telling Dagens Næringsliv that Britain was Norway’s biggest export market and it was “very strange” to reject closer dialogue.

Britain accounts for about a quarter of Norway’s exports – principally oil and gas, which account for nearly 90% of the total, and seafood – and about 6% of its imports.

The state secretary, Elsbeth Tronstad, declined to comment on the decision to reject a formal free trade working party but told the paper the two countries would continue to maintain good contacts.

Meetings were scheduled later this month between the foreign minister, Børge Brende, and his UK counterpart, Boris Johnson, and between Vik Aspaker and the Brexit secretary, David Davis, later this month, Tronstad said, with Norway and Britain still aiming to “contribute to reducing uncertainty in business”.