The Norwegian Foreign Service is presented in a nuanced manner. It’s very unfortunate.
It has all along been full openness about the special agreement scheme.
Chronicle
This is a chronicle. Opinions in the text are at the writer’s expense.
In recent days, Aftenposten has published several articles about the conditions for our seconded women and civil servants at Norway’s foreign missions. We welcome critical questions about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), but must elaborate and nuance the picture that the newspaper paints.
Aftenposten’s case about the conditions of our expatriates is not as big a revelation as the newspaper presents it. The special agreement which deals with allowances, benefits and allowances for expatriates is easily accessible at the Government’s websites. The agreement has been negotiated between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the trade unions Akademikerne, Norsk Tjenestemannslag (NTL) and Parat.
The special agreement does not contain fringe benefits, but instruments to cover additional expenses and compensate for the disadvantages of being stationed abroad on behalf of Norway for several years at a time, and for most diplomats over repeated periods.
This is necessary to staff Norway 100 foreign service missions with competent and motivated employees.
Does not get paid for overtime work
Working in the foreign service is a lot of hard work, often outside normal working hours. Deployed diplomats are not paid for overtime work or for being on call outside working hours. We must safeguard and promote Norway’s interests and provide assistance to Norwegian citizens and Norwegian companies abroad.
We must analyze and report on developments in areas that directly and indirectly affect Norway. This can be security policy, climate, energy, migration and humanitarian disasters. We must manage Norwegian development assistance.
We open doors for Norwegian culture and business.
A core task for the Foreign Service is consular assistance to Norwegian citizens. When the pandemic broke out in 2020, helped UD many Norwegian citizens with coming home from abroad. This would have been far more difficult without seconded Norwegian diplomats who worked intensively to assist Norwegian citizens.
Over the course of a year, many, both Norwegian citizens and foreigners, receive assistance from the Foreign Service. An example: In a normal year, the Foreign Service issues around 21,700 passports. We process over 223,000 visa and residence applications.
It is responsible and required positions that must be filled. Our delegates must have broad competence, international experience and good language skills.
They must be able to make good contacts and solve complicated problems. And not least: Our envoys must endure standing in crises, as they have done in, among other things KabulYangon, Kiev and Shanghai in the last year. In the final analysis, our diplomats must be prepared to evacuate their homes, workplaces and their own families and at the same time assist other Norwegian citizens in the same situation.
Expensive to establish oneself abroad
In order to staff the foreign service missions with qualified diplomats, we must ensure that they have good working conditions and conditions. It is expensive to establish oneself and the family abroad. Special agreements must, among other things, cover the additional expenses that come with outdoor service, including travel home, and compensate for the disadvantages that our employees and their families have by having a working life with constant changes of place of work.
We want to make it possible for as many of our employees as possible to and will travel the world with their families. Our diplomats usually have a spouse or cohabitant who also has a good education and a professional career back home in Norway. In some places, the partner can work, but often in positions with lower wages than they would have received in Norway.
Many accompanying spouses, cohabitants and boyfriends have to leave working life during the years their partner works for Norway abroad. It can have a significant expense for the family. We do not compensate for the loss of a partner’s income and earnings in social security and occupational pension, in addition to a limited spouse’s pension scheme for those with many years out.
Our conditions must therefore be good enough for our employees to want to work for several years at a foreign service mission, often followed by a new stay at another station before returning to Norway – and then to travel again a few years later.
We therefore give high priority to the work of making even better arrangements for spouses and cohabitants to want and be able to accompany our diplomats abroad.
No disclosure
In its coverage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Aftenposten has paid attention to the compensation for the housing tax that our and other government emissaries previously received if they manage the housing here at home while working for Norway abroad. There has been full openness about the scheme throughout. It was prepared in collaboration with the tax authorities.
The scheme was mentioned in the media when it was introduced in its time, also in Aftenposten. On 17 November 2007, for example, Aftenposten wrote that a compensation scheme was to be introduced to cover the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ tax on the benefit of housing abroad.
The price tag was then estimated at just under 20 million kroner. In 2011, the first year the scheme was fully in use, the cost to the department was 19.9 million kroner. In 2021, the costs were also DKK 19.9 million.
It is thus no revelation that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a special agreement, or that this agreement until recently was compensated for housing tax. When the parties in 2022 were the only ones to phase out this compensation, it was because they wanted to change to what was considered important: A strengthening the compensation for the inconvenience associated with staying abroad.
This compensation was assessed to better meet the needs of our envoys and their partners.
The pictures give a false impression
To illustrate how Norwegian diplomats live, Aftenposten has chosen to show pictures of the residences to several of our ambassadors. Seen from the outside, the pictures give a false impression of our broadcast housing conditions. The residence has a location, size and standard which must make it possible to use them to represent Norway and Norwegian interests.
Here are the typical many large events and confidential diplomatic meetings and conversations over the course of a year.
The vast majority of the home is used for representation. The private living area for an ambassador and family forms a smaller part of the building and is newer than what you see from the outside.
There are station chiefs, ie ambassadors and consuls general, who live in a private part of the residence. The vast majority of our dispatchers, the around 500 who are not station managers, have ordinary homes with the closest possible Norwegian standard.
The variation and housing quality is great between the places of service. Many places are safety and factor. Our envoys in Stockholm and Copenhagen may be relatively similar to those in Oslo, while conditions in places such as Kabul, Bamako and Khartoum are different.
Global and professional foreign service
It is unfortunate that the production of Norwegian foreign service is as unvarnished as what Aftenposten has presented in recent days. Norway has a global professional service and 24-hour foreign service. We work for Norwegian citizens, Norwegian interests, Norwegian business and the Norwegian authorities.
To ensure that the Foreign Service is properly staffed, we must have competitive working conditions and conditions, but we are not a pay leader.
We must make sure that our emissaries have a safe and good place to live. We must also take into account that it often comes with a partner and children who also have to start a new life in a new country when one of the family travels abroad for Norway.