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 Although Progress Party politicians like Ulf Erik Knudsen and Jan Blomseth have expressed support for the death penalty for egregious cases of rape and murder, the party's policy is opposed to the death penalty. An opinion poll taken after the 2011 Norway attacks showed that the opposition to the death penalty remained firmly entrenched, with 16 percent supporting and 68 percent opposed. Capital punishment in Norway Capital punishment in Norway () has been constitutionally prohibited since 2014. Before that, it had been fully abolished in 1979, and earlier, from 1905 the penal code had abolished capital punishment in peacetime. In