Norway - June 2023

The parliament approved the Elections Act, geared towards ensuring public confidence in legislative and local elections. The law aims to promote transparency in the counting of ballot papers, clarifies responsibility for overseeing the vote in polling stations, and introduces new requirements to ensure impartiality of election workers handling ballots. A new complaints system is introduced designed to subject election complaints to independent legal review. In addition, new requirements for polling station accessibility ensure that voters with disabilities can be assisted by an election official or other person designated by the voter. Finally, the law includes provisions that make it possible to postpone or extend an election in case of extraordinary events that may interfere with voter turnout. The law enters into force in time for the 2025 general election and will not apply for local elections scheduled for September 2023.

Sources: Stortinget, Valg, Regjeringen (1), Regjeringen (2)

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission shared a report with the parliament, detailing the Commission’s findings from a five-year study on the treatment of indigenous and minority groups, including Sámi, Kven, Norwegian Finns and Skog Finns during the “Norwegianisation” period, including interviews with survivors and their descendants. The report, commissioned by the parliament, concludes that the policy of forced assimilation known as Norwegianisation, resulted in losses of linguistic and cultural heritage of minority groups, which continues to have societal consequences and has led to several minority languages becoming endangered. The report contains recommendations towards reconciliation, including the establishment of a national competence centre on Norwegianisation policy and increased knowledge about the policy in schools and higher education. A public reading held in the National Theatre in Oslo was aired by public broadcaster NRK. The parliament will consider the report as a next step.

Sources: Stortinget, Foreign Policy, Library of Congress, UiT, NTB (1), NTB (2), NRK, Dagbladet