Når Sweden’s Minister for Energy Ebba Busch promises to “fight” in Brussels against the EU’s demand for 25% of the congestion revenues (flaskehalsinntektene), it is easy to be impressed by the rhetoric.
But behind the grand words there hides a brutal legal reality: the room for manoeuvre she boasts of scarcely exists, and for Norway the emergency exits are now walled up for good.

In December 2023 the Storting amended the wording of § 2 of the EØS Act (EØS-loven) in order to codify a total primacy for the EEA rules.
With this move Norwegian politicians themselves have ensured that national laws which attempt to protect Norwegian consumers must automatically give way if they collide with the EU’s market rules.

We have in practice legislated our own powerlessness.

Through the EEA Agreement (EØS-avtalen) and the EU’s energy packages we have subjected ourselves to a regime governed by three merciless principles: the duty of loyalty (lojalitetsplikten), the principle of primacy (forrangsprinsippet), and the requirement of a homogeneous market.

When Busch threatens to limit exports or deny the EU a share of the cake, she challenges the very foundation of the internal market.

The historical record is crystal clear:

Once one has said yes to one package, the next follows automatically. The energy market is designed for integration, not national independence.

Article 3 of the EEA Agreement (the duty of loyalty, lojalitetsplikten) dictates that we must not undertake anything that jeopardises the results desired by the EU.
This means that the “right of reservation” (reservasjonsretten) is in practice a dead letter; to use it would be to attack the very structure of the agreement of which we are a part.
Busch’s “war-type rhetoric” is political theatre directed at angry voters on the home front.

But the truth is that the premises for how our electricity revenues are to be managed are already locked in EU Regulation 2019/943.
The EU’s institutional logic rolls onward, and when the dust has settled in Brussels, loyalty to the common regulatory framework will trump national control — every single time.

With the new Norwegian wording on primacy we are, legally speaking, completely checkmated.
So long as Norway is a member of the EEA, we are committed to a homogeneous market.
We are not fighting a battle; we are standing in an implementation queue.

If the objective is that Norway shall have sovereign control over its own electricity resources, disposition of congestion revenues (flaskehalsinntekter), and export restrictions, there is legally no way around Article 127 of the EEA Agreement (the termination clause).

All other attempts (such as Ebba Busch’s rhetoric) will sooner or later crash into the EFTA Court or national courts which are now instructed to grant the EU total primacy.

Termination of the EEA Agreement is the only logical end point for my legal analysis.