The decisions made at the 2025 Session of the Nordic Council

At the 2025 Session of the Nordic Council, a series of recommendations were adopted that seek to strengthen cross-border and cross-sectoral co-operation – from enhanced public service co-operation and a new strategy for removing obstacles to freedom of movement, to joint initiatives relating to elderly care and environmental protection in the Arctic. 

The decisions made at the Nordic Council’s plenary sessions are then submitted as recommendations to either the Nordic Council of Ministers or directly to the Nordic governments. 

Here are some of the decisions that were passed: 

During the Session, the Nordic Council took a historic step towards a more inclusive and contemporary form of co-operation. Thanks to an amendment to the Nordic Council’s Rules of Procedure, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Åland will now have a permanent seat on the Nordic Council Presidium, which is the Nordic Council’s highest political body between sessions. 

The Nordic Council wants to accelerate efforts to remove the small but troublesome administrative obstacles that still create challenges for people and businesses wishing to live and work across the Nordic Region. A new recommendation on the strategy Freedom of Movement in the Nordic Region 2026–2030 was unanimously adopted during the Session in Stockholm. 

A unanimous Nordic Council recommends that the Nordic Council of Ministers ask public service media in the Nordic Region to investigate how they can better highlight content from other Nordic countries in their channels. The recommendation also includes measures to promote mutual language comprehension in the Nordic Region, such as through the use of subtitles in other Nordic languages. 

The Committee for Knowledge and Culture also succeeded in passing a recommendation to step up both the production of Sámi teaching materials and the training of Sámi teachers. The proposal aims to safeguard Sámi children’s linguistic rights, and is now being sent to the governments of Norway, Sweden and Finland. 

The ageing population is one of the greatest welfare challenges facing the Nordic Region. With more elderly people and fewer hands in the health and social care sector, there is an urgent need to find common solutions. The Nordic Council now wishes to bring the Nordic countries together around a shared strategy for the future of elderly care, with a focus on quality, mobile labour, digital inclusion, and participation for older people. 

During the Session, the Nordic Council adopted a proposal to regulate the use of polar fuels to protect the environment in the Arctic. The climate crisis has a double impact in the Arctic – as the ice melts, shipping traffic in the region increases, and so do emissions of greenhouse gases and soot particles (black carbon). When soot settles on ice and snow, it reduces the surface’s ability to reflect sunlight, which further accelerates warming. 

A majority in the Nordic Council voted to recommend that the Nordic governments strive for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to recognise polar fuels in the MARPOL Convention, and to introduce stricter rules for vessels sailing in the Nordic countries’ Arctic waters. 

Click the link below to see the full list of decisions and voting results for all matters dealt with during the Session. The page also contains links to the decision texts in the Scandinavian languages, Finnish, and Icelandic. 

Voting results from the 2025 Session of the Nordic Council – to be made available on this page soon.