OSLO, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Norway's Europe minister said Tuesday that the Nordic country will come out well in the coming Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union (EU), news agency NTB reported.
"When the article is activated and the process has started, then we can only hang on. We have good tools to do that," Norwegian Minister of the European Economic Area (EEA) and EU Affairs Frank Bakke-Jensen was quoted as saying.
His remarks came after the British parliament approved late Monday night a bill that gives British Prime Minister Theresa May the right to trigger the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
Article 50 refers to the formal procedure by which an EU member state notifies the European Council that it intends to leave the block.
Once the article is triggered, it kick-starts a two-year process for negotiating a new relationship between both sides.
Bakke-Jensen was confident that Norway and the EEA Agreement would come out well after "the divorce" between Brussels and London.
"There are two things that are important for the EU. One is to keep the Union together and the other to show that it is a reliable partner to the main partner countries," he said.
The EEA was established in 1994 and now it contains the EU's 28 member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The EEA Agreement provides for the free movement of human resources, goods, services and capital within the single market.
Norway is not a member of the EU but is part of the EEA and the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). It remains subject to the same single market regulations and the fundamental principles of the free movement of goods, services, people and capital as the 28 EU member states.
