Nordic business hit by cartoon crisis

[Menydh]

Nordic business hit by cartoon crisis

Norden
July 13, 2006

The Danish cartoon crisis has left its mark on the profitability of Nordic companies. Some Danish companies have lost markets but a joint Nordic strategy for global collaboration would ameliorate the situation and help prevent future crises. Marion Pedersen MP of the Nordic Council Business and Industry Committee has called for a number of measures to boost Nordic business, e.g. a Nordic "green card" on the American model.

Pedersen is an entrepreneur herself,co-owner along with her husband of a workshop in Copenhagen with nine employees, and a member of the business committee in the Danish parliament. During a visit to a Bornholm last week, she was told that a local dairy had felt the impact of the cartoon crisis. Arla has cut prices on the world market to try and regain ground in the wake of boycotts and the smaller dairies have had to follow suit. In the case of Bornholms Andelsmejeri, this has led to a couple of redundancies, a stop to the import of milk from Sweden and a reduction in exports.

"Many other Danish companies have also felt the after-effects," Pedersen said. She is calling for the the good name of the Nordic Region to stand up alongside Denmark and bolster both in the international arena.

"On our own we are tiny in global terms but together our 24 million people and our good reputation can make a difference. A joint Nordic promotion in Saudi Arabia would be good! What has happened to Bornholms Andelsmejeri is a prime example of the fact that no company, no matter how small, is able to escape the reverberations of globalisation," she added.

The MP believes that the Nordic Region has unique attributes, as witnessed by the report "The Nordic Region as a Global Winner" which identifies language, values, flexibility and accessible democracy as some of the reasons why the Nordic Region leads the way in so many spheres.

"But we mustn't stop now - we need to go on an improve our positions," stressed Marion, who also chairs a working party commissioned with submitting proposals for strengthening the position of the Nordic Region. The many proposals under discussion include joint funds for research and innovation, a joint Nordic market for education and training and co-operation on environmental technology. A conference on these issues is scheduled for Copenhagen in the autumn.

The lack of manpower in some parts of the Nordic Region and unemployment in others is an example of how Nordic co-operation benefit the individual countries. "Unemployed youngsters in Malmö are now getting jobs in Copenhagen, where there is a shortage of manpower," Pedersen pointed out. She is also in favour of studying whether it is worth trying to introduce a Nordic "green card" as per the U.S. model, i.e. a system that encourages immigrant labour in industries suffering manpower shortages.

"We need to start talking about a paradigm shift - a new era," the MP stressed. "We need to stop thinking solely in national terms and draft policies at Nordic level. On our own we are all relatively small and powerless but together, with our 24 million citizens, we can operate as a powerful region in Europe," she concluded.


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