History of Norway company by 1985, just to go bankrupt by 1993. Unemployment reached record-high levels in the early 1990s. By 1990 Norway was Europe's largest oil producer and by 1995 it was the world's second-largest oil exporter. Membership in the European Union was rejected in a 1994 referendum, with Norway instead joining the European Economic Area and later also the Schengen Area. Large public investments in the 1990s were a new National Hospital and Oslo Airport, Gardermoen—connected to the capital with Norway's first high-speed railway, the Gardermoen Line. A number of large government companies, such as Statoil, Telenor and Kongsberg were privatized.
Capital punishment in Norway is made that the death penalty is off the table. The Constitution of Norway was extensively amended in May 2014. The new article 93 in the constitution explicitly prohibits capital punishment (""Every person has the right to life. No one can be sentenced to death."") along with torture, inhumane or degrading punishments, and slavery, and compels the government to protect against these practices. Opinion polls have showed that about 1 in 4 Norwegians support the death penalty, with the highest support among Progress Party voters, among whom the support, as expressed in a poll from 2010, is at 51 percent.