Labour executive committee overruled (Dagsavisen)

The Labour leadership was forced to fight long and hard before the party’s national executive committee would support its plan to replace party secretary Solveig Torsvik with Martin Kolberg with immediate effect. When the Labour Party’s powerful national executive committee met yesterday, Ms Torsvik announced her decision to resign as party secretary with immediate effect. Her announcement came like a bolt from the blue and surprised everyone at the meeting – except the party leadership, Ms Torsvik herself and Martin Kolberg. A unanimous party leadership was behind the decision to install Mr Kolberg in Ms Torsvik’s place. Senior party members Trond Giske, Yngve Hågensen and Grete Knudsen were among those who criticized Thorbjørn Jagland and Jens Stoltenberg’s plan. But the call to postpone a decision was rejected.

Jagland’s man rejected (Verdens Gang)

Labour Party chairman Thorbjørn Jagland did not want Martin Kolberg, a childhood friend and the best man at his wedding, to replace Solveig Torsvik as party secretary. Mr Jagland would have preferred Jan Bøhler, but backed down in the end. The party leadership was therefore united in proposing Mr Kolberg’s candidacy at yesterday’s national executive committee meeting. Since Labour’s disastrous election result this autumn the party leadership has known that Ms Torsvik herself wished to resign before next year’s annual conference. Thorbjørn Jagland has primarily been the one who has been working for Ms Torsvik’s removal. Now she will avoid further rounds of stinging criticism, and the humiliation of being voted out of office.

Kolberg – a temporary figure (Dagbladet)

Martin Kolberg is tailor-made for the role of Labour’s party secretary. He will nevertheless play a temporary role and will probably have to give way to another when the party’s annual conference votes on the issue next year. Mr Kolberg is a loyal party apparatchik but is not perceived as the modernizing force the Labour Party needs. Mr Kolberg himself said: "I was a little surprised to be asked." He will now use his vast experience to "rebuild the party organization, open it up for debate and start a dialogue with the voters".

Strike threat looms large (Aftenposten)

All the indications are that the individual unions within the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) will be responsible for negotiating this year’s collective wage agreements. This increases the risk of conflict, but the scope of any action is unlikely to be as large as last year’s strike. Employers believe that the LO leadership, headed by president Gerd-Liv Valla, neither want moderate wage rises nor are in a position to secure them. Within the trade union movement it looks as though we could see fierce rivalry between industrial workers and public sector employees, with considerable extra costs for the employers as a result. "A reduction in the centralized bargaining element in next year’s wage negotiations will probably lead to a more unpredictable working environment. We could see more strikes," writes Aftenposten’s leader writer.

EU slams Norway’s cut in oil production (Aftenposten)

A cut in Norwegian oil production to force up oil prices could be in breach of the EEA Agreement, according to the European Commission. Aftenposten has learned that the European Commission will raise this issue with Norway during today’s meeting of the EEA Committee. The EU also intends to express its disappointment that Norway did not discuss its production cut beforehand with the EU, whose 15 member states make up Norway’s largest trading partner by far. A dialogue of this kind would have been natural given Norway’s special relationship with the EU through the EEA Agreement, a highly-placed source in the European Commission has told Aftenposten.

Could derail Røkke’s plans (Dagbladet)

Next Monday crisis could return to Kværner. That is when the company’s bondholders decide whether or not to back Kjell Inge Røkke’s refinancing scheme. Unequal treatment of Norwegian and foreign lenders represents an unexploded bomb under the billionaire businessman’s fragile construction. "The consequences could be dramatic," said Ragnar Sjoner, chief executive of Norsk Tillitsmann to Dagbladet. Norsk Tillitsmann is negotiating with Kværner on behalf of the bondholders, who have lent Kværner a total of NOK 2.6 billion. Kværner’s management is currently sitting on its hands, afraid of the outcome when the bondholders get together. The point of conflict in Mr Røkke’s plan to refinance the loans is that it would give both Norwegian and foreign bondholders the same level of interest on their bonds. Since Norwegian interest rates are high, this would give a poorer return to Norwegian bondholders than to American lenders.

Worth Noting

• Half of all Norwegians would not tell their friends that they were suffering from a mental illness, according to a survey carried out by the National Council for Mental Health – Norway. (Aftenposten)
• Owners of first and second homes built on leased land could face major problems. From 1 January a new and controversial legislation covering leasehold properties comes into force. It could result in a shock increase in ground rent. Owners of holiday homes and apartments in housing cooperatives whose contracts predate 1983 will be particularly hard hit. (Dagsavisen)
• Norway’s environmental policies have come under fire in a recent report from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Environment Minister Børge Brende has promised to do better. Norway is criticized on several points in the report, to be published on Tuesday. This is in stark contrast to the evaluation carried out by the OECD in 1993. (Aftenposten)
• Prices rose by 1.8 per cent in November, the lowest increase for five years. All the forecasts now point to Svein Gjedrem, Governor of the Norwegian Central Bank, cutting interest rates tomorrow. (Dagens Næringsliv)
• The Labour Party, the Progress Party and the Centre Party all want to let SAS and Braathens keep their frequent-flyer bonus schemes on domestic flights. The parties believe the Competition Authority should investigate alternative ways of increasing competition in the Norwegian air travel industry. (Dagens Næringsliv)
• Two out of three Norwegian couples now have their first baby together without being married. For the first time in history over half of all Norwegian children will this year be born out of wedlock. (Dagbladet)

Today’s comment from Dagbladet

The centenary celebrations for the Nobel Peace Prize were concluded yesterday with the ceremony at which this year’s prize was awarded to the UN and its Secretary General, Kofi Annan. The one hundred years which have passed since the first Peace Prize was awarded have been the deadliest in human history, which says more about the extent to which the prize is needed than its powerlessness. The organization which won this year’s prize was born shortly before the last century had reached its halfway point and immediately after the horrors of the Second World War. The first paragraph of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 already signalled that the organization would be more than just an association of nation states. The individual’s rights do not have their roots in the nation or any other association. They are founded on the individual’s reason and conscience. In Kofi Annan’s acceptance speech at yesterday’s award ceremony, the UN Secretary General returned to these words and their underlying assumption. While respect for states and nations makes war possible, peace can only be built if respect is given to the individual and his or her rights. Mr Annan said he believed that in the 21st century the United Nations’ mission would be defined by a new and fundamental understanding of the individual human being’s sanctity and dignity, regardless of race or religion. He then emphasized that the state’s sovereignty could no longer be used as a shield, under cover of which it was possible to commit gross violations of human rights. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has turned its gaze to the future in this centenary year. The award is a recognition of the fact that efforts to keep or restore peace must now be conducted in a global context. Along with that acknowledgement goes not only a new perception of the UN and the organization’s tasks, or a clearer and more action-oriented recognition that fighting poverty is part of the fight against war, but also that, in a larger context, any form of intolerance towards other cultures threatens peace. It is one of the paradoxes of the award and the centenary celebrations that the whole thing took place while three youths are on trial for a racist murder committed in the home country of the Nobel Peace Prize. No clearer demonstration could be found of the fact that the battle for peace in the 21st century must be waged in every country and on every front.