Ex-Nato boss is again finance minister in Norway

//

Lerato Khumalo

New job

Ex-Nato boss Stoltenberg again becomes Norway’s finance minister

04.02.2025 – 11:44 a.m.Reading time: 2 min.

Enlarge the picture

Jens Stoltenberg: His office as head of the Munich Security Conference has rested. (Source: Imago/Lars Schröder/TT/Imago)

Stoltenberg actually wanted to concentrate on his new position at the Munich Security Conference. Now the former NATO general secretary helps his home government in a crisis.

Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is to become Norway’s finance minister. He had nominated Stoltenberg for this office, said Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on Tuesday.

Stoltenberg said: “After carefully concerning the current challenges that we have opposed, I decided to meet the request from Prime Minister Støre to serve him as finance minister.”

The 65-year-old economist was already finance minister from 1996 to 1997. It belongs to the ruling workers’ party and was prime minister from 2000 to 2001 and from 2005 to 2013. Stoltenberg is largely considered a pragmatic politician in the middle.

The western military alliance led Stoltenberg for a decade, including during the first term of US President Donald Trump. Last year Stoltenberg resigned as NATO general secretary.

In mid -February, Stoltenberg was to take over the chair of the Munich Security Conference (MSC). However, he lets this post rest as long as he is finance minister in Norway. During this time, the MSC, Benedikt Franke and Rainer Rudolph, took over the tasks of the chairman, as was the result of a message from the MSC. In the meantime, however, Stoltenberg also wants to participate in the activities of the security conference, insofar as he allowed him to have his new office as finance minister.

Stoltenberg should have become head of the Norwegian central bank in 2022. However, Stoltenberg did not take the office after the then US President Joe Biden had asked him to continue to act as NATO boss. In February 2022, Russia started its large -scale invasion of Ukraine.

Norway’s European-Skeptic Center Party had left the coalition on Thursday in the course of a dispute over the takeover of the European Union’s energy policy. Eight months before the election, the workers’ party is now solely at the government, which is why cabinet conversion was necessary.

The workers’ party is in the surveys. Stoltenberg was very popular with NATO and then in Norway during his time and could improve the prospects of his party.

In autumn 2024, Stoltenberg said that he did not want to return to the top policy of his home country. The next Norwegian parliamentary election is scheduled to take place in September. The Norwegian constitution does not provide early new elections.