Norway more privatized with Progress Party budget deal (Vårt Land)

The budget settlement between the ruling coalition parties and the Progress Party paves the way for greater privatization in ten areas. "Quite obviously this will make it more difficult for the Government to work with the Labour Party at a later date," said Labour deputy leader Hill-Marta Solberg. The budget agreement means more privatization, and puts private and publicly owned enterprises on an equal footing when it comes to everything from the provision of local government services and healthcare to prison construction and utilization of the country’s national parks. These and other points in the agreement do not appear in next year’s national budget, but provide clear guidelines for future budgets and other policy areas. Labour and the Progress Party both agree that the measures to promote privatization are more important than the actual amount of money that has been moved from one item to another in the budget agreement itself.

Shipowners threaten to move operations abroad (Dagens Næringsliv)

According to Terje K. Andersen, president of the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association, the budget agreement between the Government and the Progress Party will lead to the ‘flagging-out’ of many Norwegian-registered ships. The shipowners and seamen’s unions did not win sufficient support for their demand for a general net wages scheme for the Norwegian shipping industry. Mr Andersen now expects that shipowners on a massive scale will switch their vessels from the ordinary Norwegian ships’ register to flags of convenience, because a number of countries offer better terms and conditions, including Sweden and Denmark. "Obviously, we are pleased that the net wages scheme for crewmembers working for the ferry companies, Color Line and Fjord Line, will be continued. But it does not help the rest of the industry, which is facing competition from foreign shipping lines with better framework conditions than those under which Norwegian companies operate," said Mr Andersen.

Defence Minister proposes Norwegian pull-out from all peacekeeping efforts in Africa (Aftenposten)

When Norway campaigned for a place on the UN Security Council, our representatives placed special emphasis on Africa’s problems. Now Defence Minister Kristin Krohn Devold wants to pull Norway out of the UN’s peacekeeping operations in the continent. Norway’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations in Africa have cost around NOK 10 million a year. The Norwegian F-16 pilots serving in Afghanistan cost NOK 600 million. The Foreign Ministry is worried about how the elimination of this small contribution to peace in Africa will be interpreted.

Christian Democrats halved in six months (Dagsavisen)

Support for the Christian Democrats has fallen by almost half to under seven per cent. Labour and the Conservatives gain two percentage points, while the Progress Party holds steady as the country’s most popular party by far. These are the most important results of a recent poll carried out by AC Nielsen on behalf of the Newspapers’ News Agency (ANB). The poll was carried out in the past two weeks, when the battle over the 2003 budget was at its height. "It does not pay to take office and assume responsibility. We are seeing that now," said Valgerd Svarstad Haugland, chairman of the Christian Democratic Party. She hopes her party’s situation will improve when "many good things" in the budget agreement with the Progress Party become visible. Several of the budget cuts which had been described as antisocial have been rectified, and local authority finances have been boosted by NOK 1 billion.

Mehamn commission to be named on Friday (NTB)

The Government aims to get to the bottom of the Mehamn affair once and for all, and has decided to set up a commission of inquiry made up of experts and probably led by an experienced judge. Recent claims that a British Harrier jump jet was in the area at the time the Twin Otter belonging to the Widerøe airline crashed into the sea in 1982 has made the inquiry a top priority. The Armed Forces have now released all servicemen from their duty of confidentiality, and are now appealing to anyone who has relevant information to bring it to the attention of the commission of inquiry. The servicemen’s duty of confidentiality was lifted by the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Sigurd Frisvold, himself. Kjell Grandhagen, a spokesman for the Headquarters Defence Command Norway, emphasized that the Armed Forces will cooperate fully with the commission of inquiry, and that no parallel investigation will be carried out by the military.

"There was a cover-up" (Dagbladet)

"Both the families of those who died and the country as a whole deserve to know who is responsible for covering up the truth about the Mehamn air crash," said long-serving Socialist Left Party MP, Stein Ørnhøi. Mr Ørnhøi is a member of the Storting’s special committee for scrutiny of the secret services, known as the EOS Committee. The Government decided yesterday to set up a commission of inquiry into the accident, but Mr Ørnhøi thinks it is crucial that it is the Norwegian Storting that will put together the broad-based commission. "The most serious aspect of the Mehamn air crash does not lie in the technical details. What is serious is why we have not been told the truth before now. Someone is responsible for that. The British authorities were denying as early as 1987 that their planes could have had anything at all to do with the Mehamn accident," he said.

Worth Noting

• Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and his Christian Democratic Party have the backing of a record low 5.9 per cent of the electorate, according to the latest poll carried out by MMI on behalf of Dagbladet. This means they have less support than the Centre Party, which stands at 6.6 per cent. According to Dagbladet, support for the Christian Democrats has not been this low since 1995.
  (Dagbladet)
• The Norwegian Confederation of Sports is to receive a record NOK 5 million in damages from TV2. The two sides arrived at this settlement after a meeting to resolve their differences on Monday. This means that TV2 is to pay the largest amount of compensation which is known to have been paid by a media company to the Norwegian Confederation of Sports. Supreme Court advocate Cato Schiøtz believes the television company would have had to pay less if the case had gone to court. "This is an extremely generous settlement from a legal point of view," he said.
  (Verdens Gang)
• "We cannot be so naïve that we do not believe individual athletes try and cheat. I say that every time. We will have new cases of doping in Norway. But this was about refuting claims that we have been systematically cheating," said the Norwegian Olympic Committee’s chef de mission, Bjørge Stensbøl.
  (Dagbladet)
• The country’s hospitals are not a penny better off after the Government’s budget agreement with the Progress Party. However, the party did find room for a NOK 100 million cut in the duty on spirits, while the road tax for motorcycles and caravans was cut by NOK 80 million.
  (Aftenposten)
• A number of MPs from Finnmark have reacted strongly to the fact that the Armed Forces are refusing to make public their files on the Mehamn air crash in 1982. Karl Eirik Schjøtt-Pedersen (Lab) says that the Armed Forces can only be damaged by giving the impression that that they are withholding information. However, he agrees that sensitive documents should be shown only to the commission of inquiry.
  (nrk.no)
• Senior Christian Democratic Party politician Lars Rise denies that he tried to use his position as an MP to avoid a prison sentence for speeding. But in the court minutes, which Aftenposten gained access to yesterday, it says: "Rise explained …. that a custodial sentence could damage public confidence on which he is dependent as an MP".
  (Aftenposten)
• The Socialist Left Party’s transport policy experts have asked their parliamentary group to vote in favour of a proposal to route the new railway line through Ringerike county away from sensitive wetland areas in order to protect the wildlife there. The manoeuvre will cost an estimated NOK 700 million.
  (Aftenposten)

Today’s comment from Dagens Næringsliv

It is three days since the Government and the Progress Party signed a deal on the national budget for 2003, and both those on the inside and those on the outside are already bickering about how the settlement should be interpreted – economically and politically. The most objective comment so far was delivered yesterday by the money market. As expected interest rates rose, after the Progress Party had forced the Government to pump a few additional billions into the economy. However, the long-term impact on interest rates is less clear. The same is true of the political consequences of the deal. In reality it ought not to come as any surprise that a minority government should arrive at a budget settlement with the party that gave it a mandate to govern. An electoral majority is reflected in a political majority that wishes the Storting to pursue policies weighted to the right of centre – assuming that the Christian Democrats as part of the ruling coalition prefer rightist bedfellows to social democratic ones. This, however, has not been so self-evident. Strong voices within the Christian Democratic Party have wanted to do a budget deal with the Labour Party, though in the end they were not strong enough. At the same time, the Christian Democrats have been unable to choose freely – being, as they are, the junior partner in the coalition. If the Government is to be forced into the embrace of the Labour Party, it will probably be with the Progress Party pulling the strings. If, at a later date, the party makes demands which the Conservatives and Christian Democrats find totally unacceptable, a number of scenarios are possible – all of them chaotic. Nevertheless, the indications are that this autumn’s budget negotiations have more clearly delineated the front lines in Norwegian politics and laid the foundations for greater predictability than we have seen in the past year. No bad thing, either of them.