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EU ELECTION PROFILE

EUPARL

Sven-Olof Sällström: Sweden should never have joined the EU

Running in the EU Parliament election is a complicated matter for Sweden Democrat Sven-Olof Sällström, he says, because Sweden should not have joined the union in the first place when presented with the opportunity in 1994.

Sven-Olof Sällström: Sweden should never have joined the EU

“My party and I are interested in Sweden leaving the EU,” Sällström says. “We want to gain Swedish independence and self-governance. We want power back with Swedish people.”

Sällström says when the Swedish government consented to join the EU in 1994, politicians never consulted with citizens or had their full support in joining. Since then, parliament has not asked the people how to develop and improve membership, he says, except for the currency referendum in 2003. When asked if they wanted to adopt the euro, 56 per cent of Swedes said no.

“I think this is a big democratic problem, because democracy means that it’s the people ruling the country,” Sällström says. “If you are afraid to ask people and don’t involve them in their political process, it’s not a democracy, is it?”

The Sweden Democrats are a nationalist party with roots in the anti-immigrant Keep Sweden Swedish movement.

Sällström says the party stands against new members joining the EU, specifically Turkey and Balkan countries. Swedish taxpayers’ money should be kept within the country’s own welfare system, not go to other EU members, he says.

“Taxpayers already pay too much for the EU and new members will cost the Swedish taxpayers a lot of money,” Sällström explains. “People now have to be asked again if they want EU membership and the development of the EU as a superpower, and the Swedish people don’t want that.”

Sällström is a self-proclaimed “late bloomer” in politics, having only joined the spectrum two-and-a-half years ago when he realized there was no representation of the Sweden Democrat party in his town, Östersund. He started a municipal organization for the party; prior to this, he worked as a manager for a local company, though he is currently on leave during campaign season.

If elected, the biggest challenge facing him will be standing up to opposition in parliament, as other parties gang up on his, he says.

“I think, for instance, in most issues the socialists and liberals and conservatives have the same point of view and there’s no real opposition,” Sällström says. “People with an opposite agenda or position are not treated decently in the Swedish parliament, and I think the same will happen at the EU parliament. But to make the issues interesting you need strong oppositions.”

Sällström says he is worried that over 60 per cent of the decisions made in the European Parliament are adopted or affect governance in Sweden. “That’s horrible because we have to bring back the power closer to the people here,” he says. “We need to stand against the EU elite.”

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PIRATE PARTY

Sweden’s political pirates signal internet’s election power

If tech-savvy campaigning helped power Barack Obama to the White House, the election of Sweden's Pirate Party in Europe signals that Internet and related privacy issues are political drivers for young voters.

Sweden's political pirates signal internet's election power

The party, which wants an internet filesharing free-for-all while beefing up internet privacy, won 7.1 percent of Sunday’s votes, taking one of Sweden’s 18 seats in the EU Parliament.

“It’s fabulous political recognition,” 37-year-old founder Rick Falkvinge, an information technology entrepreneur, told AFP. “And it hasn’t come from the ‘establishment,’ the mainstream voters. It has come from the ground, the citizens, and it feels great.”

Founded in January 2006, the Pirate Party has attracted largely young, tech-literate males angered by controversial laws adopted in the country that criminalised filesharing and authorised monitoring of emails.

Its membership trebled within a week after a Stockholm court in April sentenced four Swedes to a year in jail for running one of the world’s biggest filesharing sites, The Pirate Bay.

With 23.6 percent of votes among under 30s, and 70 percent of them male, according to pollsters, the party has leapt from nowhere to the top of the table among a generation broadly characterised by political apathy.

“The old politicians don’t understand…,” added Falkvinge. “They see these issues as an isolated problem — they function far from the keyboard, and are not (digitally) connected.”

He claimed that state surveillance rights “threaten a way of life for a generation who have gone to the ballot boxes to defend” the technological freedoms they have grown up with.

Seen at its formation as a joke, the Pirate Party largely bodyswerved traditional issues dividing left and right, a political scientist at Gothenburg University, Ulf Bjereld, told AFP.

“They are seen as a protest party because they refused to be drawn on great areas of debate such as equal opportunities, taxation or pollution,” Bjereld said.

“They have concentrated on themes close to their heart and left the other parties to slug it out on other questions.”

Many members say they joined because they fear a “Big Brother” society.

The party also wants to do away with the lucrative system that grants major drug companies’ exclusive patents.

However, Bjereld was at pains to stress these developed world ‘pirates’ should not be classed among extremists, arguing such voters represent a new class of liberal.

He predicted that their elected member, Christian Engström, will sit in the parliament’s dual Brussels and Strasbourg chambers alongside mainstream liberals and greens.

It has picked up protest votes from left and right, but mainly mobilised those who normally bypass the ballot box, said the head of Sifo polling institute, Toivo Sjoren.

“If this party hadn’t been on the ballot paper, I simply wouldn’t have voted,” said Daniel Wijk, a 29-year-old website developer.

“These questions of protection of privacy and Internet freedom are what motivate me,” he added, articulating his anger at “policing” via modern communications technologies.

“We are not all criminals,” he said.

Looking to Sweden’s next general election in September 2010, political analyst Mats Knutson called the result a “formidable cold shower” for Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

“The Pirate Party has taken advantage of a new cleavage in Swedish politics, about civil liberties, about who should have the right to decide over knowledge,” Bjereld told AFP on Sunday.

The Pirate Party, which has sister parties in 20 countries, also fielded candidates in Poland and Germany.

More than half of US adults used the internet to engage in the race for the White House, according to a study released in April.

Obama’s use of the medium to raise money and volunteers was a major factor behind his November 4th victory, numerous political analysts have said.

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