INCREASED DIALOGUE WITH UNEVEN RESULTS

Despite the challenges that the pandemic has brought to Nordic coopera-tion, all the studied countries and the interviewed Nordic representatives agreed that dialogue has improved during the pandemic. Danish inter-viewees claimed that there has been more dialogue than ever between the Nordic governments, and Swedish government officials hoped that the closer contacts established with their Nordic counterparts would also be

152 Blomqvist 2020.

153 Blomqvist 2021.

154 Blomqvist 2020.

155 Blomqvist 2021.

156 Interview, 14 July 2021, online, Finland.

157 Aftenposten 2021.

maintained after the pandemic by using digital meeting tools, for exam-ple.158 Finnish politicians and civil servants also felt that Nordic political cooperation has increased during the pandemic, which has also triggered claims that ‘the new post-pandemic normal’ should include ‘even more Nordic cooperation and contacts.’159 The parties have become closer,160 the number of informal contacts has increased161 and digitalisation has allowed more meetings to take place.162 During the pandemic, extra meetings have been held by numerous ministers or secretaries of state, including those responsible for Nordic cooperation, health, internal af-fairs, borders, development, defence, energy and labour.163 The aims of these meetings have mainly been to increase situational awareness of the pandemic and discuss planned responses.164

While in general dialogue is considered to have worked well and in

‘good spirits’165 during the pandemic, there have been a few reports of tension from the Swedish side,166 in addition to which all the Swedish interviewees mentioned communication as an area of improvement in Nordic cooperation. Poor information sharing and scattered data were seen to have hampered effective crisis management. In Sweden, the pan-demic was believed to have revealed cracks in the bilateral communication between countries, with travel restrictions having been imposed too quickly, sometimes without an advance notice. Indeed, as one respondent from a Nordic institution argued, the communication between the coun-tries appears to have varied from chaotic to well functioning.167 Some of the Nordic countries have informed the affected other Nordic countries about new restrictions beforehand, whereas others have not. Finnish politicians reported that dialogue with Sweden has worked well,168 despite claims to the opposite by their Swedish counterparts, who noted that the lack of communication between Norway, Sweden and Finland caused difficulties, in addition to which critical statements about the Swedish

158 Interview, 15 June 2021, online, Sweden.

159 Blomqvist 2021.

160 Blomqvist 2020.

161 Interview, 14 July 2021, online, Finland.

162 Interview, 14 July 2021, online, Finland.

163 Blomqvist 2020.

164 Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland 2020, 3.

165 Blomqvist 2020.

166 See speeches by MPs Jouni Ovaska and Erkki Tuomioja in Parliament of Finland 2020.

167 Interview, 16 June 2021, online, Norden.

168 See Thomas Blomqvist in Parliament of Finland 2020d.

strategy put Nordic cooperation at risk.169 According to Swedish inter-viewees, communication regarding travel restrictions worked better with Finland than with Denmark and Norway, but also improved over time with the latter two. From the Finnish side, the possible lack of sufficient inter-Nordic communication was explained with the complex national decision-making procedures regarding Covid-19 measures, which have involved several ministries and numerous civil servants.170

While dialogue between the Nordic countries has increased both bi- and multilaterally, as well as within Nordic institutions, this has not al-ways led to concrete cooperative results. Still, there have been instances of successful Nordic cooperation that all four countries highlighted in the interviews – some of these being the result of informal cooperation. One such instance was the repatriation of stranded travellers. In early March 2020, Nordic citizens were to receive consular assistance from other Nordic countries in areas where their own state did not have consular representa-tion. The Nordic foreign ministries also coordinated efforts to help Nordic citizens residing abroad return home by, among other measures, ‘filling Nordic planes with Nordic passengers’ and permitting Nordic citizens to pass through other Nordic countries on their way home.171 A Norwegian White Paper on Nordic cooperation published in April 2021 summarised that the Nordic cooperation in assisting Nordic citizens stranded abroad had been particularly close and successful. In the most acute phase, the White Paper observed, there were daily coordination meetings between the Nordic foreign ministries to help Nordic citizens return home.172 One Norwegian respondent interviewed for this study ascribed this success to the trusting and close relationship between Nordic ministers, which makes it easy to launch cooperation in practical, operative matters.173 It is noticeable, however, that the cooperation in repatriating stranded citizens was not exclusively Nordic because it also involved Nordic-Baltic cooperation (NB8) and cooperation within the EU/EEA.174

Another example of well-organised Nordic cooperation during the pandemic was Sweden’s activeness in exempting Iceland and Norway from the EU-wide export ban on certain medical protective equipment.175

Swe-169 Nordiska rådets svenska delegation 2021.

170 Interview, 6 July 2021, online, Finland.

171 Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2020b; Søreide & Sanner 2021.

172 Norwegian Ministry of Finance 2021, 37 (author’s translation into English).

173 Interview, 5 May 2021, online, Norway.

174 See e.g. Bolt 2021, 11; European Commission.

175 Reuters 2020.

den also took on the role of vaccine coordinator for Norway and Iceland.176 Nordic institutional cooperation also succeeded in dealing with some of the issues faced by stranded commuters in the Nordic countries. These problems included impracticalities related to tax rules, social security and unemployment benefits as commuters were forced to work from home or lost their jobs.177 Social security issues were solved relatively fast by the respective ministers through a decision that the country where the jobs had been based continued to be responsible for social security despite the fact that teleworking changed the country where the work was actually done.178 Tax issues remain unsettled, along with many other problems that have emerged for commuters during the pandemic179 – altogether around 100 different types of disruptions to cross-border commuting have been listed.180