Secret talks for five weeks (Dagens Næringsliv)

For five weeks Tormod Hermansen and Telenor have been conducting secret talks with the US company SBC about buying up SBC’s shares in Tele Danmark. Yesterday, too, there was contact between Telenor and SBC, which is the biggest shareholder in Tele Danmark. It is still very uncertain whether this will result in an agreement between the two companies. Analysts are in doubt, the market is hesitant, and Tele Danmark’s CEO, Henning Dyremose, is keeping his mouth shut. The Danes believe that the Americans are using Norwegian bait to catch a Swedish fish.

Grete Knudsen has given Tormod Hermansen free rein (Aftenposten)

Minister of Trade and Industry Grete Knudsen has given Telenor CEO Tormod Hermansen free rein to find acquisition candidates. She has full confidence in Mr. Hermansen’s business acumen. She herself refuses to take a stand on how wise it is to buy into Tele Danmark. Although she knew that Mr. Hermansen was interested in an acquisition, she denies that she was aware of the talks about acquiring Tele Danmark until recently.

Norway more accommodating to EU than EU countries (Aftenposten)

In the view of Kjell Magne Bondevik and Thorbjørn Jagland, Norway is bound more tightly by EU legislation than the EU countries themselves. Mr. Jagland believes that this is as it should be. These two men, who each held the position of prime minister before Jens Stoltenberg, both feel that Norway is watched more closely than EU member states in the way it follows up EU legislation. This is the view expressed in the minutes of a meeting of the EEA Consultative Committee that took place a year ago. These meetings are confidential, but the minutes are released after one year has gone by. Thus these two men, who have held the positions of both prime minister and foreign minister, have confirmed what many critics of the EEA Agreement have suspected. Ever since the agreement was entered into, the claim has been made that the EFTA countries would be forced to be ultra-obedient quite simply because the three member countries are so small in comparison with the EU. The various governments that have been in power have all denied that this is the case.

Hospitals send patients abroad (Aftenposten)

The Storting has allocated one billion kroner to the treatment of patients abroad. It seems as though NOK 475 million of these funds remain unused. The hospitals are sceptical towards sending patients away, even though they have long waiting lists. "The hospitals and county authorities are sabotaging this scheme because they want the money themselves," said John Alvheim (Progress Party), chairman of the Standing Committee on Social Affairs. Now the National Insurance Administration is considering whether psychiatric patients should also be treated abroad.

Status of the Royal Family weakened (Verdens Gang)

One third of the Storting, 54 representatives from all the parties, believe that the status of the Royal Family has been weakened in Norway in the past few years. And many of them make no secret of the fact that it is due to the attention given to the Crown Prince’s and the Princess’s relationships with Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby and Ari Behn. This was the result of a questionnaire presented by Verdens Gang to the 165 members of the Storting. The questionnaire shows that the Royal Family is not as popular among the national assembly as many people have assumed. The answers given by the Storting members also reveal that there is considerable doubt about the future of the monarchy after King Harald.

Worth noting

• The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) under the leadership of Gerd-Liv Valla may be a disaster for the Norwegian economy. This is the welcome given by Finn Bergesen, head of the Confederation of Norwegian Trade Unions, to the new leader of the LO. Mr. Bergesen has attacked the LO demand for shorter working hours, and scoffs at the "solidarity alternative" being promoted. ( Dagens Næringsliv)
• The Labour, Centre and Socialist Left parties will be negotiating on the housing tax this weekend. The result may be higher taxes on homes exceeding 400 square metres. ( Aftenposten)
• The Conservative Party was the "winner" for day-care centre prices in the municipalities where it is in power. This was the case until it became apparent that the figures were being presented by the Conservatives themselves, and were based on faulty calculations. The Conservatives should have been hurling abuse at themselves rather than at the Labour Party. Day-care centre prices are, as a matter of fact, highest in municipalities governed by the Conservatives, according to Statistics Norway. The Christian Democrats are actually the "winners". ( Dagsavisen)
• Municipalities in outlying districts will get less, and those in more heavily populated areas will get more when the Storting adopts new economic guidelines for the municipalities next spring. The Labour, Conservative and Progress Parties are behind this move. ( Nationen)
• The Norwegian State Railways and the Norwegian National Rail Administration are making a total about-face. They will finally be introducing the departure procedure that the Norwegian Railway Inspectorate demanded over three years ago. Starting on 3 June, a new procedure will be adopted in which conductors on all trains, in addition to the drivers, will be responsible for checking signals. Thus the order issued by the Inspectorate will finally be complied with, 1 300 days and several accidents after it was first presented to the State Railways. ( Dagsavisen)

Today's comment from Nationen:

Now the Labour Party has to be careful: if its popularity continues to decline in the polls, it will be very difficult for Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to convince voters that he will be able to form a government after the general election this autumn. Labour has always maintained that the Labour alternative is clear, while the opposition is unclear. This type of argument is based on a Labour Party that is clearly larger than the opposition. But now Labour is falling in the polls like a ton of bricks. The party long ago passed the 36.9 per cent mark, which Thorbjørn Jagland set as the lowest tenable position for a Labour government when he was prime minister. Labour is, in fact, so far down that the party’s own arguments are starting to rebound like a boomerang. Mr. Stoltenberg’s alternative is beginning to look more and more like Kjell Magne Bondevik’s, with regard to both his own government’s strength and its dependence on the Progress and Conservative Parties. Labour’s credibility is also at risk when it claims that the party is a particularly united alternative. On the contrary, the disagreement within Labour’s own ranks is becoming more and more obvious. Once it was an accepted political truth that the longer Labour stayed in power, the more it stood to gain. But this is by no means certain any longer. The Stoltenberg Government has not given Labour a boost; it has only continued the party’s lamentable development since it was an opposition party under Mr. Jagland. Labour’s problems are probably more serious than whether it can govern competently. Perhaps the party lacks vision, or perhaps there is too much administration and too little politics. But most likely it is quite simply the fact that fewer and fewer voters think that Labour has meaningful solutions for the problems in our society. In that case, staying in power will only serve to make matters worse for Labour.