Is there life outside the EU customs union?
Yes, there is, but things are different with milk and grill steaks.
Just today, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published a short notice about the supplies of pork getting rather low in Norway due to an increase in outdoor grilling that comes with the unusually long period of hot summer weather in Norway in 2014. The soon-to-hit pork crisis is not the first shortage ofits kind. In the end of 2011, Norway amused pretty much the rest of the world with running out of butter - an event commented by major press and broadcasting, such as the U.S. based National Public Radio (NPR) in their feature "A Rich Country Runs Out Of Butter".
How do these shortage happen in modern Europe, where the EU supermarkets flow over with produce, and where the EU occasionally and habitually has to destry overproduction of dairy products and other food produce?
Well, Norway is not part of the customs union. Neither is the country participating in the open market for food and agricultural products. Norway wishes to be in control over the sector, and has build up a complicated system of organizations, checks and balances that serve multiple purposes, such as producing enough food, getting the farmers paid well, being an independent country, and having sufficient centralized control over the market and its players.
In practice, the Norwegian food stores have to buy national first. Monopoly distribution and regulation organizations such as TINE and Nortura both make the rules and control the market for produce. Supermarkeds have to buy with them. Annual negotiations between the government, the regulators and the farmers set production goals and salaries for the farmes, which in turn set the consumer prices for produce.
So why don't supermarkets in Norway just get their steaks or butter blocks from abroad? Well, they have to import and pay preventive taxes on imports - to protect the farmers, naturally. In addition, there are tax-reduced import quotas that can be bought in auctions at the beginning of each year. Those are often used as a kind of back-up insurance by large dairy companies, just in case the national production is not sufficient.
You guess where the story is going. The introduction of an extra punitive tax on imported cheese in 2013 has both increased food specialty prices in Norway, and caused irritation with the European trade partners, as reported in the Norway Post.
So remember - a Schengen country is not necessary taking part in those segments of the common market we consumers are most interested in: good European food.
(I shall soon write a short blog entry on the Norwegian obsession of car-based shopping trips to the Swedish border, where Norwegian billionaire Olav Thon built gigantic shopping malls and grocery stores offering the temptations and prices from the EU side of the border.)
