No promise of full Nordic Council membership for Faroe Islands

Faroese Prime Minister Beinir Johannesen received no promise of full membership in the Nordic Council at a joint summer meeting of Nordic leaders in Copenhagen on Thursday, Kringvarp Føroya reports.

“But Faroese participation in Nordic cooperation is now at a crossroads,” Johannesen said, referring to the Nordic Council’s annual meeting in Helsinki at the end of October.

In the spring, the Nordic cooperation ministers appointed a committee to review the Helsinki Treaty. Its aim is to make it possible to place the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland on an equal footing with the other countries in the Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Greenlandic Naalakkersuisut chairman Jens-Frederik Nielsen told Ritzau after Thursday’s meeting that Greenland and the Faroe Islands were treated as a second-tier group in Nordic cooperation.

Greenland has repeatedly threatened to leave Nordic cooperation if it does not receive full membership.