Will it never stop? Month by month the number og Norwegians saying that they are against EU membership.

The most recent poll, made by Sentio for Nationen, a newspaper, shows a record high share of the respondents on the No side, 79.8 per cent, while only 12.6 side with Yes.

The No side leads in all age groups and in urban as well as rural areas.

Two years ago, an investor, Jens Ulltveit-Moe doneted 100.000 Norwegian kroner (appr. € 12.000) to Høyre, Norway’s Conservative Party, to encourage the party to work harder for Norwegian EU membership, according to NKR, Norway’s public broadcasting company. He is not deterred by the crisis in the Eurozone. He says:

”The countries in Southern Europe will have to undergo the same drastic economic measures as Norway and Sweden underwent during the early 1990es. At the end of that period our economies were strengthened. I am convinced that the same thing will happen in Southern Europe, but the process is going to be more noisy. However, the initial change of governments in Greece, Italy and Spain are promising.”

Stoltenberg: I am not going to make a third attempt

During his recent visit to the Congress of the German Social Democratic Parti (SPD) Norway’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, affirmed the close ties between his party and the SPD, despise Norway’s being outside the EU, writes Nationen.

Mr Stoltenberg added, however, that he was not going to make a third attempt to make the Norwegians vote for EU membership, as he would have to be quite certain to win a referendum.

Norway has had two referenda on EU membership, in 1972 and 1994, both resulting in a No.

Sources: http://m.nrk.no/m/artikkel.jsp?art_id=17904313 http://www.nationen.no/2011/12/04/politikk/eu/jens_stoltenberg/arbeiderpartiet/tyskland/7090831/

”It must be truly uphill work to campaign for Norway joining the EU, ” comments Heming Oluassen, leader of No to EU, referring to the latest Sentio poll on the issue, published on October 23.

According to the poll, 70,8 per cent of the respondents say No to Norwegian EU membership, while 18.6 per cent say Yes. 10.6 per cent are undecided. The poll was made for two Norwegian newspapers, Nationen and Klassekampen.

At the same time, dissatisfaction with Norway’s EEA membership, which obliges the country to follow the laws of the EU Single Market, is growing.

“This manifests itself in concern and partly in anger caused by the way in which the EEA agreement is undermining our policy for the rural areas and a decent labour market in Norway,” says Heming Olaussen to Nationen and continues: This is going to be the new EU debate: How much EU influence are we going to accept when we have chosen to stay outside?”

Source: http://www.nationen.no/2011/10/23/politikk/eu/eu-barometer/heming_olaussen/nei_til_eu/7003314/

64 percent of Norway’s voters would vote No to Norwegian EU membership, according to the latest Sentio poll from July. It is a slight decrease from the June record of 66,4 per cent.

Source: Nationen

Only 22.5 per cent of Norwegians say that they support the EU, according to a Sentio Survey made for newspapers Nationen and Klassekampen in january 2011. No fewer than 65,9 per cent of those polled say that they are against Norway joining the EU.

It is remarkable that there is a majority against the EU in all the categories specified in the poll, except the very small Pensioners’ Party.

Some groups are traditionally more in favour than others, but even in those the negative attitude dominates. This goes for people in Oslo and for millionaire – even here the No side leads with more than twenty percent points. And 57 per cent the voters of the Conservatives, Høyre, formerly staunch Europeans, are negative, while only 33 per cent are positive.

This means that the No to EU side has now been able to muster a majority of more than 60 per cent for the last eight months on end.

The full story (in Norwegian) is found here.

Two polls made in July show an ever increasing majority against Norwegian EU membership.

The polls made by Sentio for newspapers Nationen and Klassekampen showed these figures (per cent) for June and July:

………………….Yes……….No……..Don’t know
June 2010…….26.7……..62.5……11.8
July 2010……..25.3……..66.1……..8.6

Only one party, Høyre (Cons.) can muster a small majority for Yes (47 per cent as against 44).

Source: Nationen 19.07.2010

According to another July poll, however, the Yes majority in Høyre has also vanished. The poll made by Nordstat for NRK (the public service TV and radio) only 42 per cent are positive, while 50 per cent are negative. This is the first time ever that Høyre is unable to muster a majority for EU membership among its members.

Source: Nationen 26.07.2010

Luise Hemmer Pihl, Team Board member

Full kollaps for ja-sida. Bare 33 prosent ønsker norsk medlemskap i EU

We can guess that with barely 33% people in favor of EU membership Norway is safe out of EU.

European Voice reports that 51 percent of Norwegians are opposed to joining the EU, up from 48.3 percent, in August and 35.7 percent are in favour of joining, down from 38.5 percent. 12 percent said they did not know.

tnx to OE

Norwegians apparently know better.

On 20th of November demonstration against the passing of the Services Directive took place in front of the Norwegian Parliament. The Labour Party decided last week that they don’t want to use the right of reservation in the EEA agreement against the Services Directive. The other two government parties, the Centre Party and the Socialist Left party, voted against the passing of this directive. The Norwegian labour union (LO) demanded several guarantees from the government to support the passing of the directive, for instance that existing and future measures to prevent social dumping would be protected. The prime minister claimed this can be guaranteed, but as we all know the future content of the services directive will be decided by the ECJ.

Almost 900 Labour Party members and labour union members have signed a social democratic petition against the passing of the directive.

250 people outside the Norwegian parliament, several political parties represented, Youth against the EU hosted it. Central board member of the Norwegian Social Democrat Youth party (AUF), Stine Renate Håheim, and Boye Ullmann from one of our labour unions, made short speeches. There were other demonstrations in eight cities around Norway. We asked the government not to pass the directive after all, and a man dressed as a priest followed by a mock funeral possession buried Norwegian labour rights.

1) YOUNG NORWEGIANS SCEPTICISM TOWARDS EU RISES

77 % of young Norwegians between 17 and 30 years old are opposed to EU, according to a May 2008 survey in Norwegian daily “Aftenposten,” conducted on the 7th of May 2008. 62 % of middle aged adults, above 30 years old are also opposed to EU, while 38 % are EU-positive, according to the survey.
 
 
2) IRELAND IN POLITICAL TURMOIL

Fine Gael Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames said a survey by her staff conducted on the 10th of May 2008 in Galway county showed that around 36 % percent intend to vote No, while 30 % percent plan to vote Yes, with another 34 % percent is undecided in Galway county.
Yours sincerely, Lasse Riise, “Costal Party of Norway” (CP-N).
 
 
3) ICELAND’S PM LOUD AND CLEAR AGAINST EU

because he simply believed that the negative things about joining were far greater than the positive ones. Here is the news story in Icelandic. The headline says: “Geir: I don’t want to join the EU”

The Norwegian prime minister admits that the people had made the right choice in staying out of the Union, writes Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson, but he is still nostalgic about the idea itself, claiming he would still have liked to join the rest in Berlin to commemmorate the 50th Anniversary of the Treaties of Rome.