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POLITICS

Election Q&A: Do you want Swedish tests for would-be citizens?

The Local asked Sweden's eight parties to answer a number of questions relevant to internationals living and working in Sweden.

Published: 7 September 2018 18:06 CEST
Election Q&A: Do you want Swedish tests for would-be citizens?
We asked the parties how they want to improve SFI teaching, and if it should be compulsory to learn Swedish. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

We asked the parties in the Swedish parliament: Does your party want Swedish tests for new citizens and how do you plan to improve the standard of Swedish For Immigrants (SFI) education across the country?

Click here to read more questions and answers that matter to YOU.

The Social Democrat Party

“We want more SFI teaching hours and more individualized teaching, so that students who learn faster get better support. It should be possible to a greater extent to combine SFI with work and internships. We have ordered a large state-run inquiry, which is to propose ways of improving SFI by February 2019. The Social Democrats do not propose to introduce a Swedish test as a citizenship requirement.”


The Social Democrats are Sweden's biggest party and part of the centre-left coalition government. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

The Moderate Party

“The Swedish language is the key to Swedish society – to work, social mobility and understanding of our institutions. The Moderates want to introduce requirements for basic language skills in order to obtain permanent residency and citizenship. SFI education needs to be strengthened and a new arrival should meet individual learning targets in order to receive various benefits, for example the introduction benefit (etableringsersättning) that many new arrivals receive during their first two years in Sweden.”


The Moderates are Sweden's second-biggest party and part of the right-wing bloc. Photo: Stina Stjernkvist/TT

The Sweden Democrat Party

“Yes, as far as the Sweden Democrats are concerned it is a matter of course that good knowledge of the Swedish language should be a prerequisite to obtain citizenship. The need for SFI has increased exponentially due to the migration crisis, and this has often meant that the level of quality could not be maintained. A strict migration policy will improve the conditions for providing a quality service for those who have the right to be in Sweden. It is also important that SFI is adapted to the ability of the individual. Skilled labour immigrants often have different needs to an asylum seeker who never sat on a school bench. At the same time, higher demands for results must also be placed on the latter group.”


The Sweden Democrats are Sweden's third biggest party and run on an anti-immigration platform. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

The Green Party

“No. Learning to speak Swedish is an important aspect of becoming part of Swedish society but the Green Party does not want to reduce citizenship to a matter of language skills.

During our time in government we've individualized the study plans for SFI and extended the possibility of studying work related Swedish. To further improve the standard of SFI we've instituted an inquiry to, among other things, see how SFI better could be combined with other studies. Students of SFI should also be grouped with students of similar educational backgrounds so that they can advance their learning at a pace suitable to their educational level and ease of learning.”


The Green Party is part of Sweden's centre-left coalition government. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

The Centre Party

“The quality of Swedish for foreigners (SFI) is insufficient. A large part of those who take SFI classes don’t learn Swedish and the teaching is often poorly adapted and of varying quality. At the same time, some private and non-profit educational organizers have proven successful in teaching Swedish. But today, those taking part in SFI programmes don’t have the option of choosing other courses than those offered by the municipalities, or that the municipalities have procured. By opening up competition between new educational providers, the quality of SFI can be improved.”

“We propose the introduction of a results-based 'SFI check' (SFI-peng). Everyone who meets certain criteria will be given the opportunity to offer SFI classes. Those who want to learn Swedish are then given the opportunity to choose where they want to study, and the provider gets paid based on the results.”


The Centre Party is part of the centre-right bloc in parliament. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

The Left Party

“The Left Party is against introducing language tests for citizenship. We want to improve the quality of SFI by making SFI teachers more equipped to do a good job. That's whey we want to develop new SFI teacher training. We also want to develop a new form of education to meet the need for SFI teachers, while working against the profit interest in SFI that means that resources go to corporate profits rather than to the service.”


The Left Party is part of the left-wing bloc in parliament. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

The Liberal Party 

“Yes, we want to introduce a language test for Swedish citizenship. SFI enrolment needs to increase, but it is not enough to simply attend and sit out the time in the classroom. There is a need for increased focus on results. We therefore want to introduce a control station after 52 weeks of SFI studies. If you have only achieved limited results, you should instead get into work or an internship. It is much better to be in a context where you practise your Swedish on a daily basis instead of sitting in the classroom without results.”


The Liberals are part of the centre-right bloc in parliament. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

The Christian Democrat Party 

“No, the Christian Democrats have not proposed that you need to take a language test to become a citizen. It is important that SFI classes are adapted to the person taking them. A person who has a lot of schooling behind them should be able to advance faster than a person who lacks the experience of studying, or even the ability to read and write. We want to work for a range of SFI providers throughout the country so that there are alternatives locally and so that people are not restricted to one single actor within a monopoly.”


The Christian Democrats are part of the right-wing bloc in parliament. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

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INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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