Tight vote in Norway to decide to stick to the workforce or turn right

The Norwegians go to the polls on Sunday and Monday in a tight race to decide to continue with a government led by the workforce or to turn to the right of the center.

There are only four million voters in this founding member of NATO, which shares an arctic border with Russia and is part of the EU single market but not from a Member State.

Despite its small population, Norway has long hit its weight on the international scene, and wars in Gaza and Ukraine – as well as on American trade rates – have played an important role in the electoral campaign.

Nevertheless, in the last section of the race, the emphasis has increased to the increase in the cost of living and inequalities.

“Public spending, schools and infrastructure, rail infrastructure and road construction, this kind of thing,” explains Andreas, who is the father of a small child, what he considers the main problems.

This interior orientation became clear during the Norwegian summer policy party in the small town of Arendal last month.

Each year, the Norway’s political class joins the bosses of the company, the unions and the public on the southeast coast for a range of talks and panel meetings. This time, it opened its doors with a televised electoral debate at the national level in which all the main political leaders participated.

Among them, the Prime Minister of Labor Jonas Gahr Støre, 65, which aims for a second term, after the end of eight years of conservative regime in 2021.

He fights a challenge of a block made up of two conservative parties: the right -wing populist progress party under Sylvi Listhaug, 47, which increased in popularity, and the Høyre party of former Minister Erna Solberg, who seeks to return to power.

One of the campaign’s hot button problems has been the future of a 1%wealth tax, which the Norwegians pay if their assets increased to more than 1.76 m from Norwegian Kroner (£ 130,000; £ 175,000), although there are discounts that cover three -quarters of the value of your main home.

Hundreds of rich Norwegians have already left the country for Switzerland in recent years, anecdotal due to the high taxes of their country of origin.

Can this exodus be reversed?

Sylvi Listhaug called for the abolition of the fortune tax and the reduction of other taxes, while the Solberg conservatives want to remove the wealth tax on what they call “working capital”, as actions.

The work refuses to go so far, but has promised a large -scale tax exam. He has the former NATO Jens heavyweight chief Stoltenberg in charge of finance and he warns against the creation of a tax system which means that the richest in Norway end up paying little or no tax.

Opinion polls before the vote put the work in mind, before the Listhaug progress party and the conservatives, and partly supported by “the Stoltenberg effect”.

But if the combined forces of the center of the center victory, one of the major questions of this election is which of the two party leaders would be the Prime Minister.

Solberg, 67, who was Prime Minister for eight years, has so far refused to accept the idea that her populist rival could take office before her, suggesting that voters consider her too polarizing as a politician.

Foreign policy has rarely been far from the electoral campaign, and the last weeks have been dominated by a decision of the sovereign heritage fund of Norway – the most important in the world – to remove investments in almost half of the Israeli companies which it held due to alleged violations of rights.

The 1.9 TN (1.4 tn £) fund accumulated for decades from the huge Norwegian oil and gas resources, is managed by the Central Bank, but it must follow the ethical directives.

Banished by political winds surrounding the Gaza War, the director general of the Nicolai Tangen fund, described his recent decisions as “my worst crisis”.

Although Norway is part of NATO, it has never been part of the European Union.

It has access to the EU single market thanks to its members of the European economic domain, it must therefore respect its rules. And this is part of the Schengen area without borders of the EU.

The Russia War in Ukraine may have brought Norway closer to its European neighbors on a range of levels, but the question of joining the EU was barely addressed during the electoral campaign because the parties are wary of losing voters on such an polarizing issue.

“There is still a huge” voting “in Norway. And therefore the voters are not there,” said journalist Fredrik Solvang, who was one of the moderators of the televised debate in Arendal.

For Solberg conservatives, working actively in EU membership is a fundamental policy, but it should be based on a referendum.

“It is therefore not a question of this electoral campaign,” she told the BBC. “And of course, as long as we do not see a clearer evolution towards a majority for membership in the EU, none of us will start a new debate on the referendum.”

“The Labor Party has always been pro-EU, but this is not a subject on the agenda today,” said Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide.

“I do not include that it can happen in the future if major things happen, but at the moment, my mandate as Minister of Foreign Affairs is to try to maintain the relationship we have as best as possible.”

Part of the televised debate in Arendal included a duel between party leaders on the same side in politics.

When two parts to the right of the center – the liberals wishing to join the EU and the Christian Democrats who did not propose – were offered a choice between the EU or the flags of pride in schools, they preferred to discuss the flags.

“I suppose that with geopolitical status, it is an uncertain future and I think we may have to discuss the discussion seriously,” said Iver Hoen, nurse.

Christina Stuyck, who has Norwegian and Spanish nationality, agrees.

“I think that Norwegian politics acts as if it were on a separate island to the rest of the world and is not affected, but it is clearly the case.”

Norway has a political system involving 19 electoral districts based on a proportional representation and no party can govern alone.

To form a majority in the storage of 169 places, a coalition needs 85 seats and minority governments have long been common in Norway.

The Labor Party of Støre trained a minority government with the center party after the last elections, but this bipartite coalition collapsed in January online on EU energy policies.

The central-right block has its own disagreements, so this election can be found without a clear majority when the votes are counted on Monday evening.