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Reinfeldt and Löfven talk tough in first debate

Fredrik Reinfeldt and Social Democrat leader Stefan Löfven didn't pull any punches in the first face-to-face debate between the two men vying to be Sweden's prime minister following the 2014 elections.

Published: 17 September 2013 07:32 CEST
Reinfeldt and Löfven talk tough in first debate

While Reinfeldt, whose four-party centre-right coalition is hoping for a third election victory in September 2014, accused Löfven of preaching “placard politics”, the opposition leader countered that the government is satisfied with politics that fail to combat unemployment.

Jobs, taxes, and schools were the main themes of Monday night’s debate, televised live on Svergies Television (SVT) news magazine programme Aktuellt.

Reinfeldt did his best to defend the government’s plans for a fifth round of income tax reductions.

“We’re doing what we promised and wide swaths of wage earners are going to have more money in their pockets while you [the Social Democrats] want to expand benefits,” the prime minister argued.

Löfven countered that Sweden needed to make investments rather than lower taxes with “borrowed money”.

“You talk about energy, but you don’t create any jobs,” he said, referring to government claims that the new tax cuts would energize the Swedish economy.

Löfven added that Reinfeldt’s promise to both cut taxes and invest in schools was impossible to fulfill.

The prime minister then heckled the Social Democrat leader for not being willing to scrap the tax cuts should there be a shift in power following the next election. He also panned Löfven’s suggestion of scaling back tax reductions for the highest earners.

“That’s just placard politics,” said Reinfeldt before questioning Löfven on what sort of government he planned on putting together should the Social Democrats win back power.

While the Social Democrats created a clear red-green alternative together with the Left Party and the Greens in the run up to the 2010 elections, the three centre-left parties have yet to form a concrete coalition as the 2014 race draws closer.

“Fredrik Reinfeldt should be careful when it comes to talking about governing coalitions,” Löfven responded, hinting at poll numbers suggesting that two parties in Reinfeldt’s current Alliance coalition, the Christian Democrats and the Centre Party, may have trouble garnering enough votes to maintain representation in the Riksdag.

Following the debate, the prime minister said the exchange provided an indication of how the 2014 election race will play out.

“It’s our views on jobs, on how we manage the economy, and how we, as I like to say, can combine job creation policies with investments in the core of the welfare system,” he told the TT news agency.

“That stands in contrast to the direction the Social Democrats want to take by raising taxes by over 30 billion ($4.6 billion) on production and on new employment – especially of young people – which they then want to use to finance a massive expansion of the benefits system.”

Löfven agreed that voters got a clear idea of what differentiated the two sides’ policies.

“We have one alternative that only wants to cut taxes and then we have an alternative that instead wants to invest in more jobs and in schools and welfare,” Löfven told TT.

TT/The Local/dl

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POLITICS

‘Very little debate’ on consequences of Sweden’s crime and migration clampdown

Sweden’s political leaders are putting the population’s well-being at risk by moving the country in a more authoritarian direction, according to a recent report.

Published: 29 April 2024 08:56 CEST
'Very little debate' on consequences of Sweden's crime and migration clampdown

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast. 

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

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