Upcoming sketch for road toll solution

Sketch for road toll solution in the pipeline

The national board of the Progress Party (Frp) meet to get a status update on the process. This, without any road toll solution between the government parties publicly known.

“I will now present a sketch and go through it. I am very much looking forward to discussing with the party colleagues,” Leader of the Progress Party, Siv Jensen, tells Dagbladet as she arrives the party headquarters in Oslo.

“It is a proposal to sketch for a consensus between the four parties,” she adds.

The Liberals (Venstre) has the biggest problems of the four government parties with what is now tabled, after what NTB has been told.

Other sources, however, hope that the meeting of the Progress Party on Sunday will be a reality check. Where the party dampen its demands, realises that the aim has been too high and that the Granavolden platform is fixed.

Urgent

MP Roy Steffensen (Progress Party), who is also a member of the national board, has long expressed the urgency for the party to conclude the case. He reiterated his warning on Sunday.

“A solution is urgent, the advance vote is, after all, well underway,” Steffensen tells NTB.

More than 25,000 voters in Oslo alone are believed to have voted in advance in the municipal elections already. The election day is September 9^th.

“I have no expectations of getting a final deal tabled today, but expect Siv [Jensen] to finally deliver on something that will reduce the road toll burden on motorists,” the MP concludes.

Neither Siv Jensen nor other key party members have anything out of the ordinary to relate to a full-fledged press corps, except that they were excited about what the party leadership had to say.

“The National Assembly unanimously decided that we should replace road tolls with some increased spending of oil money,” Party Founder, Carl I. Hagen, comments.

Six demands

The extraordinary national board meeting started at 1 pm and is a follow-up to a similar meeting in June regarding road tolls.

The Progress Party made six demands to reduce road tolls then:

Halt further city packages
Change the zero-growth target
Delete road toll debts
Cutting costs in existing city packages
Make stricter demands for local contributions in cities
Say no to road pricing (GPS surveillance)

Although the party leaders from the Conservatives, the Progress Party, Christian Democrats (KrF) and the Liberals have not yet been able to present any agreement, the Progress Party still finds a need to “inform about the status” in the talks, according to State Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Atle Simonsen (Progress Party).

The Progress Party’s demands have led the party on a collision course with the Liberals, who throughout the summer has been adamant that the government platform stands firm.

Sveinung Rotevatn (Liberals) states to NTB that measures leading to increased traffic and emissions in the cities are out of the question. Rotevatn is secretary of state in the Ministry of Climate and Environment and is a member of the central board of the Liberals

“The Liberals, on the contrary, enter the election on expanding public transport and lowering fares,” Rotevatn asserts.

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