Electricity exchange forecasts high prices throughout 2003 (Aftenposten)

Electricity prices will remain far higher than normal throughout the spring, summer and autumn, according to Hartvig Munthe-Kaas, communications manager at Nordic Pool, the Scandinavian electricity exchange. Oslo Energi agrees. Electricity bills this year will be over 60 per cent higher than last year’s, estimates Oslo Energi’s communications manager Kjell Stamgård.

Electricity assistance threatens social services (Dagsavisen)

Politicians’ promises that record high electricity bills will be covered by the country’s social security offices could result in cuts in funding for pre-school day-care, day-centres for the elderly and youth clubs. Oslo’s city council has been loudest in promising help to elderly people who fear that their electricity bills will be larger than they can manage. But the city’s boroughs, who will have to foot the bill, are already operating on extremely tight budgets. Other local authorities besides Oslo are concerned about the consequences of the politicians’ promises of financial assistance to help pay electricity bills.

Hysterical environmentalists blamed by Progress Party (Dagbladet)

"Responsibility for the unreasonably high price of electricity must be placed squarely at the door of the hysterical environmentalists in the other political parties. They have blocked the completely justifiable construction of both gas-fired power stations and additional hydro-electric schemes, which would have given us a completely different price level in the market. We Progress Party members have a clear conscience. It is high time the other parties took responsibility," said Progress Party chairman Carl I. Hagen. Today, the Progress Party will present a proposal to the Storting to drop the electricity surcharge during the four coldest months of the year.

EU sends massive bill to Norway (Verdens Gang)

Tomorrow the EU will present Norway’s taxpayers with a massive bill. It will cost NOK 3-4 billion to secure the free movement of Norwegian fish to the EU’s new member countries. "Norway understands that the principle of solidarity and the correlation between benefits and costs should also apply to EU expansion," declared European Commissioner Mario Monti after a meeting with Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik yesterday.

Police fraud unit victim of smear campaign, it is claimed (Dagens Næringsliv)

Erling Grimstad, chief public prosecutor with the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime has said he cannot rule out the possibility that certain people are attempting to blacken the unit’s good name following the death of former Health Minister Tore Tønne. "There are many people in society who could wish to weaken the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime. I am firmly convinced that it would be to the detriment of society as a whole if the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime were weakened," said Mr Grimstad. His comments come in response to criticism from lawyers and other commentators who have said it was wrong to bring charges against Mr Tønne.

Call for setting up of watchdog to supervise police fraud unit (Aftenposten)

Who investigates the investigators? Progress Party chairman Carl I. Hagen believes a separate watchdog should be set up to keep an eye on the public prosecution service and the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime. "Quite simply I am wondering whether the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime did a proper job in connection with the Tønne case. But I have no possibility of finding out as long as there is no watchdog to take a closer look at the way the investigation was run," said Mr Hagen, who also pointed out that many areas of society are subject to the scrutiny of public watchdogs.

Auditor General informed (Nationen)

The Foreign Ministry has informed the Office of the Auditor General of the results of an analysis showing how Worldview Rights has spent the foreign aid allocations it has received from the Norwegian state. Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was chairman of the charitable foundation in 1996 and 1997. Worldview Rights has received just over NOK 39 million in project funding from the Foreign Ministry since its establishment seven years ago. The Ministry does not wish to publish its conclusions regarding the use of that money until it has reviewed the material itself.

Banks face difficult year ahead (Aftenposten)

The Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission is predicting that several smaller banks will experience acute financial difficulties as a result of businesses defaulting on their loans. Mergers could be a way out of the mire for some banks, while a number of medium-sized banks will have to slash costs, according to the Commission’s Bjørn Skogstad Aamo. In addition to the Finance Credit scandal, it is the problems plaguing export industry and the fish farming sector which will lead to rising losses on business loans for the banks.

Finance Credit founder will go straight to jail (Verdens Gang)

Trond G. Kristoffersen, one of the founders of Finance Credit, is willing to accept a long prison sentence. "The day after his arrest I told the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime that the only thing for it was to go for a summary conviction in the lower court," said Anders Brosveet, Kristoffersen’s defence counsel. In cases where the defendant makes a full confession and pleads guilty as charged, sentencing can take place in a court of summary jurisdiction without the need for lengthy and expensive trial proceedings.

Boom in applications for wine and spirits import licences (Dagsavisen)

An unusually large number of applications for import and wholesale licences for beer, wine and spirits were received last year. The Health and Social Affairs Directorate received 49 such applications last year, compared with 28 in 2001. The opportunity to sell alcopops is an important reason for the increase. So far the Department of Alcohol and Drug Control has approved 36 of last year’s applicants. The remaining applications have not yet been evaluated. This means that 189 companies had an import and wholesale licence for beer, wine and spirits at the close of last year.

Worth Noting

• Electricity is normally cheaper in Norway than in Sweden, Finland and the rest of Europe. Now the situation has been turned on its head. At the moment Finnish consumers are paying 34 øre per kWh, while we are paying a whopping 117 øre.
  (Dagbladet)
• Norske Skog has halted paper production at its plants in Skien, Skogn and Follum for a few days this week. This allows the company to sell the electricity it would normally use to make paper while electricity prices are at record levels.
  (Dagsavisen)
• For the first time in the history of the Norwegian compulsory education system, Education Minister Kristin Clemet will today publish a complete list of the grades achieved by every single primary and lower secondary school in the country. Teachers and educationalists are sceptical.
  (Dagsavisen)
• They are 100 times bigger than us and are one of the world’s superpowers. When Norway opens negotiations tomorrow on a revision of the EEA Agreement, we are embarking on the most difficult international negotiations ever undertaken.
  (Dagbladet)
• Telenor’s chief executive Jon Fredrik Baksaas has received a first-rate response to his offer of redundancy packages. Only five per cent of the employees in Telenor Business Solutions and Telenor Mobil who have been offered severance packages have turned Mr Baksaas down.
  (Dagens Næringsliv)
• Women are withdrawing from the labour market as a result of the high level of unemployment. Last year, 10,000 disheartened women gave up hope of finding a job.
  (Dagsavisen)

Today’s comment from Aftenposten

In response to the tragic death of Tore Tønne, former Labour leader Thorbjørn Jagland has invited contributions to a timely debate on the role MPs play in controversial cases which are the subject of noisy media coverage. Mr Jagland has warned his colleagues not to assume the role of prosecutor or judge, and repeated that it was not up to the Storting to accuse Norwegian citizens of violating the law or pass judgment on them. We agree with Mr Jagland that, more than anyone, MPs should take care to uphold the traditional separation of powers between the legislature, executive and judiciary, which "forms the central pillar of our constitutional government". The primary target for Mr Jagland’s criticism is undoubtedly Socialist Left Party MP Ågot Valla who, in her capacity as chairperson of the Storting’s Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs Committee, asked the Prime Minister’s Office to report former Health Minister Tore Tønne to the police because of the ‘waiting pay’ he received after resigning his office, and who strongly criticized the Prime Minister’s Office because its officials contented themselves with asking Mr Tønne to repay two months’ salary. Ms Valla is not the only, but certainly the clearest example of a parliamentary committee chairman who has used that position to make more or less well thought out comments, which may perhaps find support in their own party, but which do not always represent the committee as a whole. As chairperson of the parliamentary committee which is supposed to exercise the legislature’s supervisory function, Ms Valla should be extra careful not to get her roles confused in such cases.