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Swedish party head calls for crisis chief to resign over Canaries trip

The leader of Sweden's centre-right opposition has called for the head of the country's crisis preparedness agency to resign after he took a holiday in the Canary Islands which broke national recommendations.

Swedish party head calls for crisis chief to resign over Canaries trip
Dan Eliasson, the head of the Civil Contingencies Agency, has argued that the trip was necessary. Photo: Marianne Løvland/TT
“If I led Sweden's government,” Ulf Kristersson wrote on his Facebook page. “I never would have accepted that the head of the country's crisis preparedness agency first preaches to the people that you should avoid everything unnecessary, and then themselves travels overseas and leaves the land, just as the crisis is worsening.”
 
“It's an abdication of responsibility. He should accept the consequences and leave his job,” he added. 
 
Pressure has been growing on Dan Eliasson, the head of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), over the trip, which came to light shortly after the country's prime minister, Stefan Löfven, was photographed shopping, and the finance minister Magdalena Andersson was photographed hiring skis in a Swedish mountain resort. 
 
 
 
 
Eliasson is a career civil servant who became a target for the populist Sweden Democrats when he headed the Swedish police from 2014 to 2018.
 
Hans Wallmark, the Moderate Party MP who was President of the Nordic Council between 2014 and 2019, was in the Canary Islands at the same time as Eliasson, and even spent some time with Eliasson and his family as their sons are friends. 
 
After Kristersson's demand for Eliasson's resignation, it emerged that yet another Moderate MP, Cecilie Tenfjord Toftby travelled to Spain over Christmas, and even did a radio interview criticising Löfven for going shopping while she was in Spain. 
 
Kristersson said that what made Eliasson's case particularly serious was that it was about more than failing to provide a good example. 
 
“He has operative responsibility for leading Sweden in a crisis and should therefore be in the country, ready to act.” 
 
Kristersson called on the country's government to state clearly whether it still had confidence in Eliasson or not, threatening that otherwise the Moderates would call Eliasson to the parliament's justice committee themselves, so that he could be questioned over his trip.  
 

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of 420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of 2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some 200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of 2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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