Norway to pay more for EU market access
Non-EU members Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway will have to pay at least €70 million extra a year for access to the bloc's single market if Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union next year, with oil-rich Norway paying almost the whole bill, Norwegian media reports.
The European Economic Area (EEA) pays annual contributions to the EU in return for access to the bloc's internal market allowing Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to sell their goods and services across the union.
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Norway currently pays €205.8 million in annual contribution - ten times more than before the ten most recent member states joined the EU in 2004.
The European Commission has not confirmed the precise level of the EFTA countries' post-Romania and Bulgaria contribution but says the increase will be nowhere near the one faced in 2004.
The EU executive will soon receive the mandate from EU leaders to negotiate the exact price Norway and the other two EFTA countries are to pay.
"If it was rich Schwitzerland that became a new member state, then there really wouldn't be any talk of Norway and the other EFTA countries having to contribute more," the head of the EU office in Oslo Percy Westerlund said.
"But Bulgaria and Romania are remarkably poorer than the average of the ten countries that joined the EU two years ago. That will affect the calculations that are now being made in Brussels," Mr Westerlund added, according to Norwegian daily Aftenposten.
"They can count on it that the EU will in principle use the same logic and calculations as during the expansion from 15 to 25," EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn told Aftenposten.
