Family photo of the Nordic-Canadian Prime Minister's.
The Prime Minister's from Iceland, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Credit: Martin Lerberg Fossum / Office of the Prime Minister of Norway

As delivered

Good morning! This has been a good working session among close friends. I am very happy to host the Prime Minister from Canada, Mark Carney, visiting, and then be able to unite with my Nordic neighbours, here at the Nordic-Canadian meeting.

Bienvenue, Monsieur le Premier ministre. Nous sommes réunis ici, les pays nordiques et le Canada. Proches géographiquement, nous partageons des valeurs, tous nos défis sont désormais devant nous. Nous avons discuté du fait que nous sommes plus forts ensemble.

We are stronger together. And we have addressed today issues which really are critical to all of us.

We are Arctic nations, and the Arctic perspective when it comes to security; how we are going to look to that security inside the transatlantic Alliance, how we are going to secure critical dependencies of our economies as we develop our societies further, how we are going to protect our values as open, liberal, modern democracies, in a world where autocratic forces are moving ahead and are weaponizing critical resources.

These are issues that matter to our countries. I am particularly happy that we can do a Nordic-Canadian convention here. We have agreed to follow up this meeting and to be more concrete on what we really can do together as six, but also as we bring these critical issues into the agendas beyond the six.

There is the European Union on the European side, there is the upcoming NATO Summit, we have work going on in WTO and in the United Nations, and we believe that these six countries are not weak countries; they are strong countries in terms of their values, in terms of their determination, and we are ready to follow-up from the discussion you have seen in our common statement today.

These are also critical issues for developing modern, green economies, that take advantage of new technologies, the development in space, artificial intelligence, so we have a lot we can do together.

So, thank you, colleagues for being here, and Prime Minister Carney, the floor is yours.