Norway's EU referendum
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2018
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the end of November 1994, Norway voted in a referendum not to join the European Union. The issue had split the country, and Norway was the only one of four countries that had referendums on EU membership that year to vote against. A senior member of the Yes campaign, former Norwegian foreign minister and Labour politician, Espen Barth Eide, tells Louise Hidalgo about the night they lost.
Picture: fishing vessels with banners reading "No to EU" in the harbour of Tromso two weeks before the referendum took place (Credit: Press Association)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:25.7 | and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.6 | Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:33.0 | I'm Louise Adalgo and today I'm taking you back to the end of November 1994 |
| 0:38.0 | and a referendum in Norway that divided the country on whether or not to join the European Union. |
| 0:44.0 | Former Norwegian foreign minister and Labour politician Espen Bhat Ida |
| 0:48.4 | was part of the Yes campaign, and he's been remembering the night the votes were counted. |
| 0:53.0 | Because it was so narrow, there were conflicting exit polls |
| 0:58.0 | and the two main TV channels. |
| 1:00.0 | One of them pointed towards a yes vote |
| 1:02.0 | and the other one pointed to a no |
| 1:03.6 | vote for quite a while until eventually real counts came in and we could see the no side |
| 1:08.8 | gradually grow. |
| 1:11.3 | S-Men Bart Ida was at the Yes campaign headquarters in Oslo. |
| 1:17.0 | For four years he'd been working on the campaign to try to persuade |
| 1:21.0 | Norwegians that Norway would be better off in the European Union. |
... |
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