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EUROPEAN UNION

Swexit, nej tack! Most Swedes would vote ‘remain’: survey

Swedes are among the happiest in the EU with their country's membership of the union, according to a new Eurobarometer poll on behalf of the European Parliament.

Published: 17 October 2018 12:32 CEST
Updated: 17 October 2018 15:32 CEST
Swexit, nej tack! Most Swedes would vote 'remain': survey
Swedes give the red light to leaving the EU. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

A total of 77 percent of Swedish respondents believe EU membership is a good thing, an increase of nine percentage points over the past six months and Sweden's highest recorded level since 2007, according to the survey. Only seven percent said it was a bad thing and 16 percent described it as “neither good nor bad”.

Two thirds of Swedes (63 percent) told the survey they are against joining the European economic and monetary union with one single currency. Sweden voted against adopting the euro with 56 percent no votes to 42 percent yes votes in a national non-binding referendum in 2003.

If a referendum was held tomorrow regarding Sweden's membership of the EU, 83 percent said they would vote to remain and ten percent said they would vote in favour of a Swexit.

Support for remaining is only stronger in Luxembourg and Ireland (85 percent), and Sweden scored significantly higher than the EU on average (66 percent remain, 17 percent leave). Notably, in the UK, currently preparing for Brexit, 53 percent said they would vote remain if a referendum was held today, compared to 35 percent who would vote leave.

Swedish respondents also appear to be content with the level of democracy in the EU (61 percent said they are satisfied with European democracy) with 90 percent saying they believe that their vote counts.

Election Q&A: Where do the Swedish parties stand on Swexit?

A total of 48 percent said however that the EU is “going in the wrong direction”, despite Sweden showing an extraordinary increase in a positive direction when it came to almost all other indicators in the survey.

Pollsters also asked EU residents which areas they consider as threats. Climate change is the top threat for Swedes (62 percent) as well as the Danes and Dutch, compared to terrorism in the UK and France, poverty and social exclusion in Greece, and illegal immigration in Malta, the Czech Republic, Italy and Greece.

A total of 44 percent of Swedes cited organized crime as a threat that they wanted the EU to protect them against, 43 percent cited poverty and exclusion, 42 percent terrorism, 34 percent political extremism, 32 percent religious radicalism, 30 percent armed conflict, 24 percent fake news and disinformation online, 19 percent illegal immigration, 15 percent unemployment and 10 percent cited abuse of personal data online.

The figures are the result of face-to-face interviews with 27,474 EU citizens aged above 15, carried out between September 8th and 26th, at the time of Sweden's general election on September 9th.

Read the full Eurobarometer report HERE.

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IMMIGRATION

Border centres and ‘safe’ states: The EU’s major asylum changes explained

UPDATE: The EU parliament has adopted a sweeping reform of Europe's asylum policies that will both harden border procedures and force all the bloc's 27 nations to share responsibility.

Published: 8 April 2024 09:42 CEST
Updated: 11 April 2024 10:29 CEST
Border centres and 'safe' states: The EU's major asylum changes explained

The parliament’s main political groups overcame opposition from far-right and far-left parties to pass the new migration and asylum pact — enshrining a difficult overhaul nearly a decade in the making.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the vote, saying it will “secure European borders… while ensuring the protection of the fundamental rights” of migrants.

“We must be the ones to decide who comes to the European Union and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers,” she said.

EU governments — a majority of which previously approved the pact — also welcomed its adoption.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Greece’s migration minister, Dimitris Kairidis, both called it “historic”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe was acting “effectively and humanely” while Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi hailed what he termed “the best possible compromise”.

But there was dissent when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban derided the reform as “another nail in the coffin of the European Union”.

“Unity is dead, secure borders are no more. Hungary will never give in to the mass migration frenzy! We need a change in Brussels in order to Stop Migration!” Orban said in a post on social media platform X.

For very different reasons, migrant charities also slammed the pact, which includes building border centres to hold asylum-seekers and sending some to outside “safe” countries.

Amnesty International said the EU was “shamefully” backing a deal “they know will lead to greater human suffering” while the Red Cross federation urged member states “to guarantee humane conditions for asylum seekers and migrants affected”.

The vote itself was initially disrupted by protesters yelling: “The pact kills — vote no!”, while dozens of demonstrators outside the parliament building in Brussels held up placards with slogans decrying the reform.

The parliament’s far-left grouping, which maintains that the reforms are incompatible with Europe’s commitment to upholding human rights, said it was a “dark day”.

It was “a pact with the devil,” said Damien Careme, a lawmaker from the Greens group.

Border centres

As well as Orban, other far-right lawmakers also opposed the passage of the 10 laws making up the pact as insufficient to stop irregular migrants they accuse of spreading insecurity and threatening to “submerge” European identity.

Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of France’s far-right National Rally, complained the changes would give “legal impunity to NGOs complicit with smugglers”.

She and her party’s leader who sits in the European Parliament, Jordan Bardella, said they would seek to overturn the reform after EU elections in June, which are tipped to boost far-right numbers in the legislature.

The pact’s measures are due to come into force in 2026, after the European Commission first sets out how it would be implemented.

New border centres would hold irregular migrants while their asylum requests are vetted. And deportations of those deemed inadmissible would be sped up.

The pact also requires EU countries to take in thousands of asylum-seekers from “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece, or — if they refuse — to provide money or other resources to the under-pressure nations.

Even ahead of Orban’s broadside, his anti-immigration government reaffirmed Hungary would not be taking in any asylum-seekers.

“This new migration pact practically gives the green light to illegal migration to Europe,” Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said before the vote, adding that Budapest “will not allow illegal migrants to set foot here in Hungary”.

‘EU solidarity’

German’s Scholz said on X that the accord stands for “solidarity among European states” and would “finally relieve the burden on those countries that are particularly hard hit”.

One measure particularly criticised by migrant charities is the sending of asylum-seekers to countries outside the EU deemed “safe”, if the migrant has sufficient ties to that country.

The pact resulted from years of arduous negotiations spurred by a massive inflow of irregular migrants in 2015, many from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.

Under current EU rules, the arrival country bears responsibility for hosting and vetting asylum-seekers and returning those deemed inadmissible. That has put southern frontline states under pressure and fuelled far-right opposition.

A political breakthrough came in December when a weighted majority of EU countries backed the reforms — overcoming opposition from Hungary and Poland.

In parallel with the reform, the EU has been multiplying the same sort of deal it struck with Turkey in 2016 to stem migratory flows.

It has reached accords with Tunisia and, most recently, Egypt that are portrayed as broader cooperation arrangements. Many lawmakers have, however, criticised the deals.

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