Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

What Sweden’s new coronavirus cash boost means for healthcare services

Sweden's centre-left government and its parliamentary allies have pledged to hand out billions of kronor to healthcare and elderly care, in a series of new investments to boost a welfare sector battered by the corona pandemic.

Published: 7 September 2020 10:34 CEST
Updated: 7 September 2020 18:10 CEST
What Sweden's new coronavirus cash boost means for healthcare services
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and Centre Party leader Annie Lööf at a joint press conference on Monday. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

“It is, if you pardon me, a heck of an investment in welfare,” said Prime Minister Stefan Löfven as he presented the new proposal at a joint press conference with Centre Party leader Annie Lööf on Monday morning.

Work to hammer out Sweden's next budget is under way between the Social Democrat-Green coalition government and the Centre and Liberals, and it is set to be a more important task than ever as the country attempts to kick-start its economy and jobs in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

The full budget is scheduled to be presented to parliament later this month, but news about various proposals usually trickles out in dribs and drabs in the weeks leading up to the big day, and today was one such day.

The government's budget proposal will earmark a permanent annual investment of four billion kronor (approximately $458 million) to boosting elderly care, as well as an additional 1.7 billion kronor which will be added on top of a previously advertised package designed to drive new and skilled staff to elderly care. In total, that means that Sweden's elderly care sector will altogether receive 7.4 billion kronor in 2021.

Four billion kronor per year will also be injected into Sweden's healthcare sector over the next two years, to help plug the gap of a 'healthcare deficit' as a result of planned surgeries being postponed during the coronavirus crisis. The money can also be used for coronavirus-related medical care.

The four parties involved in the budget negotiations – set out in the so-called January Agreement which enabled the Social Democrats and Greens to take office in 2019 – also propose increasing the funding for Sweden's 290 municipalities and 21 regions in general. That includes a cash boost of 10 billion kronor next year and five billion in 2022, of which 70 percent will be added to the coffers of municipalities and 30 percent to regions.

In total, the proposal presented on Monday includes investments in the welfare state to the tune of 19.7 billion kronor to be handed to Sweden's local and regional authorities in 2021, said Lööf.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

WORK PERMITS

Business leaders: Work permit threshold ‘has no place in Swedish labour model’

Sweden's main business group has attacked a proposal to exempt some jobs from a new minimum salary for work permits, saying it is "unacceptable" political interference in the labour model and risks seriously affecting national competitiveness.

Published: 25 April 2024 17:37 CEST
Updated: 26 April 2024 06:11 CEST
Business leaders: Work permit threshold 'has no place in Swedish labour model'

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise said in its response to the government’s consultation, submitted on Thursday afternoon, that it not only opposed the proposal to raise the minimum salary for a work permit to Sweden’s median salary (currently 34,200 kronor a month), but also opposed plans to exempt some professions from the higher threshold. 

“To place barriers in the way of talent recruitment by bringing in a highly political salary threshold in combination with labour market testing is going to worsen the conditions for Swedish enterprise in both the short and the long term, and risks leading to increased fraud and abuse,” the employer’s group said.   

The group, which represents businesses across most of Sweden’s industries, has been critical of the plans to further raise the salary threshold for work permits from the start, with the organisation’s deputy director general, Karin Johansson, telling The Local this week that more than half of those affected by the higher threshold would be skilled graduate recruits Swedish businesses sorely need.   

But the fact that it has not only rejected the higher salary threshold, but also the proposed system of exemptions, will nonetheless come as a blow to Sweden’s government, and particular the Moderate Party led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, which has long claimed to be the party of business. 

The confederation complained that the model proposed in the conclusions of the government inquiry published in February would give the government and political parties a powerful new role in setting salary conditions, undermining the country’s treasured system of collective bargaining. 

The proposal for the higher salary threshold, was, the confederation argued, “wrong in principle” and did “not belong in the Swedish labour market”. 

“That the state should decide on the minimum salary for certain foreign employees is an unacceptable interference in the Swedish collective bargaining model, where the parties [unions and employers] weigh up various needs and interested in negotiations,” it wrote. 

In addition, the confederation argued that the proposed system where the Sweden Public Employment Service and the Migration Agency draw up a list of exempted jobs, which would then be vetted by the government, signified the return of the old system of labour market testing which was abolished in 2008.

“The government agency-based labour market testing was scrapped because of it ineffectiveness, and because it was unreasonable that government agencies were given influence over company recruitment,” the confederation wrote. 

“The system meant long handling times, arbitrariness, uncertainty for employers and employees, as well as an indirect union veto,” it added. “Nothing suggests it will work better this time.” 

For a start, it said, the Public Employment Service’s list of professions was inexact and outdated, with only 179 professions listed, compared to 430 monitored by Statistics Sweden. This was particularly the case for new skilled roles within industries like battery manufacturing. 

“New professions or smaller professions are not caught up by the classification system, which among other things is going to make it harder to recruit in sectors which are important for the green industrial transition,” the confederation warned. 

Rather than implement the proposals outlined in the inquiry’s conclusions, it concluded, the government should instead begin work on a new national strategy for international recruitment. 

“Sweden instead needs a national strategy aimed at creating better conditions for Swedish businesses to be able to attract, recruit and retain international competence.”

SHOW COMMENTS