Red-Greens breaking up: Sahlin

“We’re taking a break in our red-green cooperation,” Social Democrat leader Mona Sahlin told the Aftonbladet newspaper on Tuesday.

The comments came after Sahlin emerged from morning meetings with Fredrik Reinfeldt and Carl Bildt to discuss Sweden’s military presence in Afghanistan and one day after the Red-Green coalition presented its shadow budget.

“We’re going to continue to meet and work together, but it will be in a different form than it was during the election,” Sahlin told the newspaper.

Green Party spokesperson Peter Eriksson also confirmed that his party wouldn’t be working together with the Social Democrats and Left Party in the same way as the three parties had during the 2010 election campaign.

“It won’t be the same intensive way as when we were preparing for a change in government,” Eriksson told the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

According to Eriksson, the Red-Green shadow budget presented on Monday will likely be the last presented jointly by the three parties.

“We won’t present a common budget in the next few years,” Eriksson told the newspaper.

Even during the presentation of the budget on Monday, there were signs that the three parties were thinking about going their separate ways.

“We all have the need to review our own policies,” the Social Democrats’ economic policy spokesperson Thomas Östros said on Monday, according to SvD.