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Shoppers urged to ‘buy Swedish’

The Swedish government has called on the nation's sense of patriotism and is advising consumers to "buy Swedish" this Christmas to protect jobs.

Published: 6 December 2008 10:58 CET

Shoppers urged to 'buy Swedish'

Photo: Janerik Henriksson/Scanpix; John McConnico/AP

“If you open your Christmas present and it says ‘Made in China’ then you haven’t done much to secure Swedish jobs,” Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said according to a report in Aftonbladet.

The Swedish government announced on Friday that it plans to spend 23 billion kronor ($ 2.8 billion) over the next three years on increased support for the unemployed and more funding for high school and vocational training.

Measures included the re-introduction of a tax deduction for home improvements to boost the maintenance services sector among other initiatives as the government battles to ward off a deep recession.

The prime minister has now gone one step further and appealed to Christmas shoppers to do their patriotic duty and buy Swedish made goods this holiday season.

Measures to beat the feared slump have varied across the European Union as member countries oscillate between taking coordinated action to tackle the economic gloom and doom, and taking care of more national concerns.

Sweden’s plea for patriotic purchasing mirrors the call of the Irish government to its people.

The British government meanwhile decided last week to do its bit with the announcement of a temporary cut in sales taxes (VAT) in a bid to boost sagging demand.

Reinfeldt said on Friday that he is however not keen on hasty temporary measures that would then be retracted in a couple of years as the government resisted calls to raise child benefit to give families more spending power this Christmas.

Was Norway ill prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic?

Photo by Eirik Skarstein on Unsplash

The 450-page report was submitted to Prime Minister Erna Solberg by medical professor Stener Kvinnsland, who led the review.

The commission found that, generally, Norway had handled the pandemic well compared to the rest of Europe. That was in part due to citizens taking infection control measures on board.

“After a year of pandemic, Norway is among the countries in Europe with the lowest mortality and lowest economic impact. The authorities could not have succeeded if the population had not supported the infection control measures;” the report states.

However, the commission’s report also outlined that Norway did not properly prepare itself for the pandemic.

“The authorities knew that a pandemic was the most likely national crisis to have the most negative consequences. Nevertheless, they were not prepared when the extensive and serious Covid-19 pandemic came,” it said.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg said during an interview with the commission, conducted as part of its work, that the government did not have an infection control strategy of its own.

“We had a ‘we have to deal with a difficult situation’ strategy. We had to do everything we could to gain control and get the infection down. It was really only at the end of March (2020) that we found the more long-term strategy,” she told the commission.

Low stocks of personal protective equipment were another source of criticism in the report.

“The government knew that it would in all probability be difficult to obtain infection control equipment in the event of a pandemic. Nevertheless, the warehouses were almost empty,” Kvinnsland said at a press conference.

Norwegian health authorities were praised for the swiftness with which they implemented infection control measures. But the commission said that the decision should have been formally made by the government, rather than the Norwegian Directorate of Health.

READ MORE: Norway saw fewer hospital patients in 2020 despite pandemic

The implementation of restrictions in March 2020 was critiqued for failing to ensure that “infection control measures were in line with the constitution and human rights.”

One-fifth of municipalities in Norway lacked a functioning plan in the event of a pandemic according to the report, and the government did not provide enough support to municipalities.

“We believe that government paid too little attention to the municipalities. The municipalities were given much larger tasks than they could have prepared for,” Kvinnsland said.

The report was also critical of Norway’s lack of a plan for dealing with imported infections in autumn 2020.

“The government lacked a plan to deal with imported infections when there was a new wave of infections in Europe in the autumn of 2020,” the report found.

“When the government eased infection control measures towards the summer of 2020, they made many assessments individually. The government did not consider the sum of the reliefs and it had no plan to deal with increasing cross-border infection,” it added.

The report also concluded that Norway allowed itself to be too easily lobbied by business when deciding to ease border restrictions last summer.

The division of roles in handling aspects of the pandemic was scrutinised in the report. Here, the division of responsibilities between the Ministry of Health and Care Services, The Norwegian Directorate of Health and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health were unclear.

The prime minister has asked the commission to continue its work.

“We are not done with the pandemic yet. Therefore, it is natural that the commission submits a final report. There will also be topics where the learning points can only be drawn later,” Solberg said.

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