Questions about the budget of the Norwegian Royal Family are being raised after it was discovered that the cost is almost double what has been reported in the state budget.
Costs associated with the Royal Family are listed as 232,229,000 kr, but costs associated with maintaining and operating the royal yacht, personal military adjutants for royal family members, overseas travel, and maintenance of royal properties are not included in this figure. Instead, they are spread out in the budgets for the Defense Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the local governments ministry. These additional costs total around 117.1 million kroner.
The cost of bodyguards for the members of the Norwegian Royal Family is not included in the budget, and the estimate is that it costs about 110 million kroner a year. The cost is believed to have grown because of travel and because of the young members of the family who have bodyguards stationed with them at school.
Without the cost of the King’s Guards, which were not factored in the exposé because the numbers were uncertain and because the guards are supposed to come under the defence costs, the total cost of the Norwegian Royal Family is believed to be 460 million kroner.
In the past six years, the cost of the Norwegian monarchy has risen about 37 per cent; and salary payments have more than doubled since 2002, from 52 million kroner to 119 million kroner in 2014.
The household of Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit has grown since 2002, with the state tripling their funding for the staff to 18.8 million kroner.
The revelation of the Norwegian Royal Family’s budget comes days after it was revealed that the Danish Royal Family spent more money than they earned in 2015, and that they received 78.4 million kroner from the state.
