Tough love | 23 November 2017

When Angela Merkel invited refugees to Germany in 2015, tearing up the rules obliging migrants to seek asylum in the first country they arrive in, the consequences were pretty immediate. Over 160,000 went to Sweden, leading to well-publicised disruption. Next door, things were different. Norway took in just 30,000; this year it has accepted just 2,000 so far. To Sylvi Listhaug, the country’s young immigration minister, this might still be a bit too much.

‘We have a big challenge now to integrate those with permission to stay in Norway to make sure they respect Norwegian values,’ she says. ‘Freedom to speak, to write, to believe or not to believe in a god, how to raise your children.’ Also, she says, what not to do. For example: ‘It is not allowed to beat your children in Norway.’

It’s unusual for a European government minister to link immigration with child-beating, but the 39-year-old Ms Listhaug is accustomed to speaking plainly. The rest of Europe, she believes, is coming around to the Norwegian position.

After decades in opposition, her Progress Party entered government four years ago, junior partner in a Conservative-run coalition. Her party envisaged the problems of mass migration in the 1980s, she says, so was well ahead of the populist upstarts now haunting so much of Europe. ‘A lot of them are socialist parties but against immigration. We are a libertarian party. We want less government, so people should decide more over their own life. And we want a stricter immigration policy because that’s important for Norway in the long run.’

While Sweden and others saw the migration of 2015 as a blip caused by conflict in Syria and Iraq, she sees it as part of an irreversible demographic trend.