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INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Will Eurovision bring party cheer to Malmö or is it too late?

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 4 May 2024 08:10 CEST
Inside Sweden: Will Eurovision bring party cheer to Malmö or is it too late?
Malmö's Folkets Park is being transformed into Eurovision Village. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

“It’s a damp squib,” a friend in Malmö told me about Eurovision.

They’re not the only one looking forward to the song contest with uninspired wariness rather than the excitement that organisers most likely hoped for when they were named host city last year. The mood isn’t what you’d expect in a Eurovision-crazed country like Sweden.

Tension over Israel’s participation in the contest has, despite attempts by the European Broadcasting Union to justify it, only grown in recent weeks. A few weeks ago it started to feel as though excitement was starting to build in the city, but it’s largely died down since.

Several protests are planned in the city, which has a large Palestinian population, and irrespective of people’s specific views on the Israel-Hamas war, there’s probably a little voice in the back of a lot of Malmöites’ minds wishing the event had gone to Stockholm or even Örnsköldsvik instead.

Ten percent of volunteers have already cancelled their participation in Eurovision, and several artists set to perform at side events organised by the city have also pulled out.

Although there’s nothing the city of Malmö itself can do to affect EBU’s decision, its events have become tainted by association. The city’s organisers are putting on brave faces, but they can’t be happy either.

There’s also the fact that for a lot of Malmö residents, their city is practically shutting down for at least a week.

An event without the political backdrop might have made that easier to bear. Now, not so much.

The train that goes from Malmö’s central station to Malmö Arena where the final will be held is also the main commuter artery through the city – public transport operator Skånetrafiken has vowed to bring in extra departures, but crowded buses and trains seem inevitable.

Folkets Park in the Möllevången area of Malmö is a popular park where parents take their children, but this coming week it’s going to make up the heart of Eurovision Village, the main zone for fans.

Hopefully visiting fans will still be able to enjoy their time in Malmö. Some 100,000 visitors are expected to descend on the city in the coming week. On Thursday I spotted a group of people just off the train, dressed up in Abba-inspired disco outfits, who looked happy to be here.

Malmö is actually a perfect city to host this kind of thing. It’s got great public transport connections, but is also small enough that if the train is indeed too crowded, most distances are walkable.

It’s got an incredible food scene and it would be a mistake to only look for traditional Swedish fare during a visit to Malmö – the international food stalls, restaurants and bars are what make the city.

And being in southern Sweden, the weather is generally better than in Stockholm, although I did check the weather report just now and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get much warmer than 13C.

Do you live in Malmö or are planning to visit for Eurovision? What are your thoughts? Are you going to be attending the event, marching in demonstrations, or simply doing your best to avoid the whole thing?

Let me know at [email protected].

In other news

Is Sweden meeting its 30-day work permit target for high-skilled foreigners? Three months after the Swedish Migration Agency rolled out a new system for work permits, The Local investigated to see how long highly qualified foreign professionals now have to wait for a decision on their permit.

In last week’s episode of Sweden in Focus Extra: Why does the government want to increase income requirements for work permit holders and why are businesses so opposed to the plan?

Which foreign accent do Swedes prefer? A new study from Sweden’s Institute for Language and Folklore took an in-depth look at how Swedes respond to a dozen different foreign accents.

Is the Swedish property market coming back to life after a long period of hibernation? Recent figures suggest as much.

A report in Dagens Nyheter this week revealed over 514 suspected leaks of sensitive information from at least 30 members of the police force to criminals since 2018. Here’s what we know so far.

As always, there’s much more to read on www.thelocal.se.

Have a good weekend and thanks for reading!

Best wishes,

Emma Löfgren

Editor, The Local Sweden

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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For members

INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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