ABSTRACT
Venstre has traditionally defined itself as a social liberal party but electoral decline, and the threat of falling below the 4% national qualifying threshold for top-up parliamentary seats, has prompted the search for a niche identity and to the claim that it is the greenest of the non-Socialist parties. In December 1965, the Finnish People's Party and the Liberal League joined forces to form the first capital ‘L’ Liberal Party in Finland that pledged to pursue ‘integrationist centrist politics’. A more obstacle to the formation of a non-Socialist bloc alternative has been the rise of the Progress Party, which in the six elections between 1997 and 2017 averaged 17.7% of the vote. Venstre split over Norway's third application for European Economic Community (EEC) membership in 1972 and a pro-EEC minority formed a splinter party, which changed its name to Det Liberale Folkepartiet in 1980.
