I want to give my thanks to the Norwegian embassy here in Berlin and our ambassador, Mr. Bjørn Tore Godal, for hosting us and arranging this reception so well for us.

I want to express a special welcome

• to my colleges from the Nordic and the Baltic countries
• to all guests from Germany and other countries
• to my special accompanying Norwegian delegation from trade and industry
• and to all of you, coming from Norway, representing farmer,- food and tourism organisations, trade and industry, or quite simply yourself. Welcome to you all!

This is the 20. anniversary for Norways participation at The Green Week here in Berlin, and I must say I am proud of inviting colleges, friends and partners to our embassy and to an arrangement so very well prepared. During these years the embassy has shown to be an important meeting place for business and social contact in the Green Week, between politicians and participants from trade and industry in the agricultural and tourism sector.

The reason why we give priority to the Green Week is because it is important for Norwegian farmers and the food and tourism industry to develope our competitiveness through:

• Close contact with new international market trends,
• testing Norwegian products in a demanding and economically strong market and
• building network and developing cooperation with new business partners.

Our goal at this years Green Week is to escalate tourism; we want to increase the stream of German tourists to Norway and thus give impact to my political strategy for rural development. This strategy is based on an offensive use of agricultural resources, which is also connected to local goods and services in the food and rural tourism sector.

Germany is our biggest and most important tourist marked abroad, representing 28 per cent of the total sales to foreign visitors with 5,3 million guestdays, which give a turnover estimated to 3,5 billion Norwegian kroner.

We are therefore here to show the German consumer the results of an offensive Norwegian agricultural policy and how we utilize our competitive advantages connected to local food, local culture and the landscape itself, and how we make a total tourism product out of it. This gives an impact on the value creation in the rural districts and thus helps us to maintain the population and vital rural societies.

We think that Norway, but also the Nordic countries really has competitive advantages in the agricultural food and tourism sector. The New Nordic Food Program, initiated by The Nordic Council of Ministers, underlines this fact. These competitive advantages are given by nature itself with a clean and beautiful nature, but also developed by farmers; - in Norway they have given us a cultural heritage consisting of cultural landscapes and high quality on local food, services and agricultural based tourism products.

It is therefore important here at the Green Week to show German consumers how Norwegian local food, the landscape, goods and services together represent an interesting tourist product, which they might be willing to pay for.

But we are also here in order to learn from other countries how to build a national brand out of a total tourism concept, consisting of a total experience of local food, local culture, the cultural landscape and the nature itself.

On behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Norway I therefore have the pleasure to welcome you all, and in particular all our foreign guests being interested in meeting representatives from Norwegian farmers and food and tourism industry in Norway.

I hope we will spend some interesting hours together and have fruitful discussions on tourism trade and business cooperation.

Thank You!