Norway’s Conservative Party is holding its annual national meeting (landsmøte) this weekend, without one potentially troublesome feature: the notorious nachspiel. They’re the late-night parties-after-the-party, and the Conservatives have found it necessary to crack down on them.
They’ll also be serving less alcoholic beverages during the weekend, when around 700 party members are gathered at a hotel in Gardermoen, north of Oslo. The combination of alcohol and nachspiels at earlier party events has played a major role in the sexual harassment cases that emerged from the international “MeToo” campaign against harassment.
The charges brought against the leader of the Conservatives’ youth group, Kristian Tonning Riise, to which he has admitted, have shaken party leaders. Riise, who’s also a Member of Parliament, hasn’t even been allowed to attend this year’s national meeting, nor meetings of the youth group he headed. He’s been stripped of all other party roles and only remains an MP because that’s an elected office from which he can’t be fired.
“There will be no nachspiel” at this year’s national meeting, the party’s secretary general, John-Ragnar Aarset, announced at a press conference earlier this week. Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who opened the meeting Friday afternoon, said she personally hadn’t attended a nachspiel for the past 18 years. She hoped there would now be “more even more fresh and energetic Conservatives” at sessions on Sunday morning.
newsinenglish.no staff
