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Sweden’s Centre Party leader abandons bid to break political deadlock

UPDATED: The leader of Sweden's Centre Party, Annie Lööf, on Thursday announced she was abandoning her bid to try to break Sweden's political deadlock after a week of cross-party talks.

Published: 22 November 2018 07:19 CET
Updated: 22 November 2018 10:43 CET
Sweden's Centre Party leader abandons bid to break political deadlock
Annie Lööf on her way in to meet the media. Photo: Jessica Gow / TT

Lööf's meeting with parliamentary speaker Andreas Norlén lasted an hour longer than expected, but she confirmed she had been unable to find support for a workable government and added that she did not see any possibility of leading a minority government herself.

“In such an unclear parliamentary situation as we have now, one side needs to tolerate the other in order to reach a solution to the question of government,” Lööf said. “There is currently no basis for this.”

“It is now up to the speaker to decide the next step,” she said, adding that there would be no sense in her asking for more time to carry out exploratory talks. 

She explained that there was significant cross-party agreement on the areas of defence and schools but named labour and migration policies as topics that were difficult to find common ground on.

SWEDEN IN FOCUS: How did the political situation get to where it is today?

Lööf was last week given the role of sonderingsperson, tasked with carrying out cross-bloc talks aimed at finding a solution to the deadlock that has lasted over two months since the September election. Over the past week, she has met several times with the Social Democrats and the Green Party, who together form a centre-left bloc and have led Sweden in a minority government for the past four years. 

The September election left neither the centre-left nor the four-party centre-right Alliance — comprising the Moderates, Christian Democrats, Centre Party and Liberals — with a majority, and just one seat separates the two blocs. In the two and a half months since then, both the Social Democrats and Moderates have tried and failed to break the deadlock.

The biggest stumbling block has been the fact that two parties in the Alliance, the Moderates and Christian Democrats, have so far refused to work with the centre-left. But that would require them to rely on support from the far-right Sweden Democrats, something the Centre Party and Liberals are opposed to.

Lööf said she looked into three alternatives: the Alliance working with the Social Democrats, the Alliance working with the Green Party, and a minority centrist government made up of the Centre Party and Liberals.

There is no set deadline by which Sweden must form a government, but the number of prime ministerial votes that can be held before a snap election is automatically called is capped at four.

Three of these chances remain after Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson was not accepted by parliament, due to the Centre Party and Liberals refusing to back a government that relied on support from the far-right Sweden Democrats. This means the country is now in untested waters — previously, parliament had always accepted the first candidate to be proposed.

Lööf cancelled a planned event on Wednesday and was also absent from parliamentary debates over several proposed law changes due to the ongoing talks.

Shortly after Lööf announced her decision, the speaker issued a statement in which he said he would contact the different party leaders by telephone during the day and that he will hold a press conference on Friday.

FOR MEMBERS: Who's running the country? Your questions about the Swedish election

 

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FACT CHECK: Has the EU really banned Swedes from lighting bonfires?

Claims that a new EU law had outlawed lighting fires in private gardens have hit the headlines recently, with outraged Swedes accusing Brussels of banning Sweden's traditional spring fires. But how true are they?

Published: 19 April 2024 10:39 CEST
FACT CHECK: Has the EU really banned Swedes from lighting bonfires?

What’s happened?

On April 6th, TV4 Nyheter published a story claiming that burning twigs and leaves in private gardens has been illegal since the beginning of the year, due to new EU rules.

“A common habit for gardeners during their spring cleaning is now banned. An EU law which came into force at the beginning of the year demands that all food and garden waste are sorted separately,” the article states, quoting Milla Sundström, an administrator from the waste and chemicals unit of the Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket) as saying this “indirectly” bans spring fires.

Sundström added that the ban is enforced by local councils, so rules may differ.

Wait… why is it so important for Swedes to burn twigs in their gardens?

It’s a common way of getting rid of the leaves and branches that have accumulated over the last year, with the ashes often used as fertiliser in the garden. It’s usually only allowed for a couple of weeks a year in spring and again in the autumn, and during Valborg at the end of April, when it’s traditional to light a spring bonfire.

Quite a lot of people in Sweden live in pretty remote areas, so it’s much easier for them to get rid of bulky garden waste by burning it rather than having to drive it off to the nearest recycling centre.

So has burning garden waste been banned by the EU?

Technically, no.

The EU law says that member states should “encourage the recycling, including composting and digestion, of bio-waste”, as well as encourage home composting and promoting the use of materials produced by bio-waste, but it doesn’t say anything about banning fires.

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Center Party MEP Emma Wiesner wrote on X, before blaming the government for interpreting the law incorrectly.

“Banning tidying up in your own garden has clearly NOT been the EU’s intention. The inability of the government and authorities to implement the simplest of directives is embarrassing and adds to the contempt for politicians,” she added.

So who has banned fires on private property?

In a regulation from December 22nd, 2022 signed by Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari, the government writes that exemptions “from the prohibition on the incineration of separately collected waste” may be granted in the case of public events. 

This refers to a separate law governing waste, which states that “waste that has been collected separately to be prepared for reuse or recycling should not be incinerated”.

This regulation came into effect on January 1st, 2024.

Wait… what does that even mean?

Admittedly, the regulation isn’t particularly clear. Having said that, the new rules on bonfires appear to stem from Naturvårdsverket interpreting this regulation as an outright ban.

“The new regulations mean that garden waste must be composted on-site, left at a recycling centre, or collected by the council,” it writes in a post on its website dated April 11th. “In practice, this means that it is no longer permitted to burn branches, leaves and other garden waste”.

Naturvårdsverket claims that this is “part of the introduction of the EU’s waste directive, which means that bio-waste should primarily be recycled”.

It does, however, add that local councils are able to grant exceptions, “for example if it’s a long way to the closest recycling centre”.

So whose fault is it?

Energy and business minister Ebba Busch, who is head of the climate and business ministry, seemed to indicate in a post on X that the confusion was due to the badly-worded rules introduced by the government at the beginning of the year, which were designed to coincide with the EU’s waste directive.

“I want to be clear and say that the government has not introduced a new ban against burning garden waste,” she wrote, alongside a picture of her standing in front of a fire in her own garden.

“There are new rules, but not any huge changes compared to how it’s worked in the past. We can see that these can be interpreted in different ways. For that reason, the rules will be clarified,” she added.

Can I burn twigs in my garden then?

Maybe.

Despite politicians sharing posts telling you to “Keep calm and keep lighting fires,” you should check with your municipality before you do so.

Some, like Halmstad, have interpreted the new regulations as meaning that you can still light a fire in your own garden, while others require you to apply for an exemption (which usually includes paying a fee), whether you’re applying for a May bonfire or just want to burn some leaves in your own garden.

Others, like Värmdö municipality, allow you to burn things like twigs and small branches in your garden, while stating that grass and leaves should be composted.

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