Text tabled : A7-0276/2011

  Raül Romeva i Rueda (Verts/ALE), in writing. – In favour. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Norway benefits from the internal market, but agriculture and fisheries are exempted from free circulation in the 1992 Agreement on the EEA. Instead, Article 19 provides for progressive liberalisation of agricultural production through reviews of the conditions of trade in agricultural products, carried out at two-yearly intervals, and decisions on a preferential, bilateral or multilateral, reciprocal and mutually beneficial basis on further steps in that direction to reduce other types of barriers on trade in the agricultural area. The latest agreement between the Kingdom of Norway and the European Community, based on Article 19 of the EEA Agreement, came into force in July 2003. It comprised the arrangements for reciprocal trade in cheese and mutual concessions for a variety of agricultural products, including tariff quotas. From March 2008 to January 2010, new negotiations were held and resulted in the present draft agreement.