[ad_1]
Anna Hallberg (S).
This is the lead editor of the newspaper. Sydsvenskan’s attitude is independently liberal.
When handling the pandemic slows down EU cooperation, Nordic cooperation should pay off to some extent. Especially in light of the vision that the Nordic prime ministers agreed to in Reykjavik last year: ten years from now, the region will be the most sustainable and integrated in the world.
“The collaboration has been exposed to great tension,” he said, but also emphasized that the vision of sustainability and integration is firm.
So how should the Nordic countries move forward now?
Of course, the ministers responsible take turns ensuring that as soon as the spread of the infection has subsided, they will do everything in their power to normalize trade and travel between countries. But the pandemic is dragging on and as recently as Thursday, Denmark announced that restrictions on Skåne will be tightened.
The Danish government explains that new measures are being taken to safeguard progress in infection control work. But it is a fact that the European Infection Control Agency ECDC has determined that closed borders have no effect on the spread of infection, except in countries that are in principle free of infection.
“We have heard the European assessment of infection control, but we still concluded that it was necessary to introduce these restrictions to guarantee the life and health of our citizens.”
Without downplaying the risks of covid-19, it should be discussed what that reasoning can do in relations between the Nordic countries in the long term.
There has been passport freedom in the Nordic countries since 1952 and, although with different levels of ambition, countless initiatives have been taken over the years to increase cooperation between the countries. In the Öresund region, hopes soared with the opening of the Bridge in 2000, but fell significantly when border barriers were introduced in connection with the refugee crisis in 2015.
Then, as now, it wasn’t just about immediate opportunities to intervene between countries. In the long run, public opinion about working, living, leisure and holiday conditions in neighboring countries suffers. And it doesn’t stop there. With their motives for border barriers, the Nordic countries are also sowing mistrust in the responsibility and political strategies of others. This runs the risk of staying much longer than the infection control restrictions.
Of course, it would be better if the Nordic countries clearly indicated that they are fighting the pandemic together. Different national strategies are not necessarily an obstacle to this. So why does the situation still look like this? The starting point for further developing Nordic cooperation may not be as good as it was assumed when the Reykjavik vision was expressed.
But in any case, this does not mean that it is wrong to continue to fight for an integrated and sustainable Nordic region. On the contrary, when the road is longer, it is important to increase political efforts to achieve the goal.
