Norway has become a full member of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR), moving from de facto partner to part of the strategy’s joint leadership and agenda-setting. The European Commission framed the step as reinforcing collective capacity on shared challenges, from security and resilience to innovation and territorial cohesion.
Raffaele Fitto, Executive Vice-President for Cohesion and Reforms, said Norway’s membership strengthens the Baltic dimension of EU cooperation and aligns with the Commission’s communication on strengthening the EU’s eastern border regions. Cooperation with Norway will span civil security and resilience, health, innovation and social cohesion. Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, had formally requested participation in October 2025.
As a next step, Norway will join the National Coordinators Group, the strategy’s highest decision-making body, and appoint representatives to its 14 steering groups. The EUSBSR, approved by the European Council in 2009, was the EU’s first macro-regional strategy; until now it involved eight member states, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden, with Norway active as a de facto partner.
For the region’s energy agenda, the move is more institutional than operational, but it matters: the strategy’s steering groups coordinate cross-border work on connectivity, resilience and innovation, and Norway, a major energy supplier to the EU, gaining a formal seat strengthens the framework through which Baltic energy and infrastructure cooperation is increasingly organised.
