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‘The Swedish model can continue to deliver’

Sweden's finance minister Magdalena Andersson presented the government's spring budget proposal on Tuesday as it upgraded growth forecasts for the next couple of years.

Published: 18 April 2017 11:17 CEST
'The Swedish model can continue to deliver'
Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

The government expects GDP, one of the key indicators used to gauge the health of a country's economy, to grow by 2.6 percent this year, 2.1 percent next year and 2 percent in 2019.

“By pursuing a responsible fiscal policy since taking office, we have succeeded in bringing the huge public finance deficit we inherited back to surplus each year of this electoral period. This has placed us in an entirely new position and offers us new opportunities to meet social challenges. The Swedish model can continue to deliver,” said a confident finance minister before presenting the budget proposal to parliament.

Unemployment is expected to reach 6.6 percent this year and drop to 6.4 percent in 2018 and 6.3 percent the following year.

“Unemployment has fallen considerably since 2014 and is expected to continue to fall over the next few years. The employment rate of people aged 20-64 is now the highest ever recorded in the EU. Youth unemployment is the lowest in 13 years and long-term unemployment has fallen; Sweden now has the lowest long-term unemployment rate in the EU, together with Denmark,” said the finance ministry.

The budget surplus puts the centre-left Social Democrat-Green coalition government in a strong position ahead of Sweden's next general election in autumn 2018, said experts.

“It's good growth and that creates good conditions for the government. It could not have been better, and then you hand this out a little by little so that everyone is happy,” Annika Winsth, economist at Scandinavian banking giant Nordea, told the TT news agency.

Swedbank's economist Anna Breman echoed her comments. “There's a lot of election slogans,” she said. “Then there's focus on the labour market, knowledge, climate, equality and security.”

The centre-right opposition however accused the government of having too rosy an outlook. Jakob Forssmed of the Christian Democrats said the finance ministry was not doing enough to plug widening gaps in the labour market, where unemployment is growing among foreign-born and disabled people.

“The biggest gap is between those who have a job and those who do not, and that's why it is surprising that the government isn't doing more about it,” he said.

The Moderate Party's finance spokesperson Ulf Kristersson argued in a parliamentary debate on the budget that there could be trouble on the horizon. “It is not the government's tight, active finance policies that have led to better finances, but rather that we've gone from recession to an econonmic boom. If we were to get a new crisis, we would have dramatic deficits. Better savings are required during an economic boom.”

The key points in the government's spring budget proposal include more money for maternity care, mental health care for children, climate investments and the police, as well as higher taxes for those on medium and high incomes and lower taxes for pensioners.

The spring budget is an extension of the main autumn budget. In Sweden, all governments have the chance to revise their annual budget each spring, to adapt to events or economic changes that have emerged since the start of that year. It will need parliamentary approval.

READ ALSO: Five key points about Sweden's spring budget

READ ALSO: Funding boost won't save closed Swedish maternity ward

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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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