No plans to close representation office in Israel

Prime Minister Aksel V. Johannesen has been opposed to the idea of a Faroese representation office in Israel ever since it was proposed.

“The decision to open the representation of the Faroe Islands in Israel was to a large extent based on former foreign minister Jenis av Rana’s personal wish,” he says.

“A minister’s personal wish is not the right basis for such an important foreign trade decision.”

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However, he says that the new government has no concrete plans to close it down at this point.

“We opposed the opening of an office in Israel at the time partly because we did not feel it was in line with our foreign trade priorities at the time,” he says.

“However, now that the office has opened, closing it down after only two years would be an unfortunate diplomatic signal to send out.”

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The government will be assessing the relevance of each of the representation offices on an ongoing basis to ensure that the offices serve their purpose and correspond with the government’s foreign affairs priorities.

”We will ensure that in the future, decisions such as this one will be based on broad parliamentary consensus and not simply on a minister’s personal preferences.”

The Faroes currently have six representation offices – in Moscow, London, Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Brussels and Tel Aviv.

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.