Diana Wallis speaks to Storting's Foreign Affairs Committee in Brussels (Diana Wallis MEP)

Diana Wallis MEP <info@dianawallismep.org.uk>

Diana Wallis speaks to Storting's Foreign Affairs Committee in Brussels

March 21, 2006 4:38 PM

MEP Diana Wallis will tell the Storting's (Norwegian Parliament's) Foreign Affairs Committee on its visit to the European Parliament in Brussels today, Tuesday 21st March, that she will have met a couple of hundred Norwegians over the past 18 months but that it is no substitute for Norway not having its own MEPs.

Diana Wallis MEP, who heads the European Parliament's delegation to Norway and the EEA Joint Parliamentary Committee, said in advance of the meeting:

"Looking back through the diary I would estimate that over the last 18 months or so I have spoken to about 200 Norwegians who have visited the Parliament in groups of between five and thirty. Hardly a week goes by without a group of one sort or another from Norway visiting the European Parliament. It has got to the stage where my staff jokingly refer to me as the 'MEP for Oslo South'. Whilst I am happy to meet Norwegians where the diary allows, my first responsibility has to lie with my constituents in the north of England.

"For Norwegians, whether they are politicians, representatives of regional bodies, students, industrialists, trade unionists or others, they would be best served by having their own MEPs looking after their interests. The Norwegian Government's much vaunted EEA plus will not change this, because Norway will still lie outside the institutions whether it is the Parliament or the Commission or the other institutions."