As local reform in Norway is known as decided in a law of June 2017 reorganization of Norwegian municipalities that the government Solberg was performed. It ran parallel to the regional reform and was completed on January 1, 2020. Since then Norway has been divided into 356 municipalities.
In December 2014, a selection of experts recommended reducing the number of municipalities by setting a minimum number of inhabitants for the municipalities. The experts suggested using a number between 15,000 and 20,000 residents.
The main supporters of the reform were the right-of-center parties, the Høyre Party and the Fremskrittspartiet (FrP). As a justification for the necessity of the reform, the government stated that each municipality should have sufficient financial and human resources to meet the demands placed on it. The Social Democratic Workers' Party (Ap) is committed to not bringing communities together against their will. From the start, the biggest opponent of the reform was the Senterpartiet (Sp), which was strongly represented, especially in rural areas .
In spring 2017, the Solberg government published its legislative proposal for the new division of municipalities. This planned to reduce the number of municipalities from 426 to 358. 32 of the municipalities that, according to this proposal, should be transferred to new municipalities, were against this merger. The Norwegian Parliament Storting voted in June 2017 for this reform.
The local elections in September 2019 were held taking the new borders into account. The reform was completed on January 1, 2020. In many municipalities, streets had to be renamed, otherwise there would have been duplicate addresses.
Amalgamations
A total of 119 municipalities were merged into 47 new ones.