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Who’s who: The key players in Sweden’s political crisis

Sweden could be on the brink of a government collapse after a no-confidence motion that has seen parties from opposite sides of the political spectrum united in challenging the government. So who are the politicians involved in the upset?

Published: 18 June 2021 11:35 CEST
Updated: 22 June 2021 15:56 CEST
Who's who: The key players in Sweden's political crisis
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (L) and Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar in parliament on Thursday. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Stefan Löfven, Prime Minister and Leader of the Social Democrats

Sweden’s Social Democrat Prime Minister has been in the role since 2014, and came into politics after heading up one of Sweden’s most powerful trade unions, following a career as a welder.

The key thing to know about Löfven is that he’s known for his negotiation skills, and he’s had ample opportunity to flex them during his tenure.

Just months after taking power, his party failed to push its budget through, and Löfven called a snap election, but this was cancelled after crisis talks. In the next election in 2018, his party got its worst result in over a century, and it took four months of negotiations before a new government was put together. Still, Löfven remained at the helm. His government also holds the record for the most votes of no confidence, having survived six since the 2014 election. Can he continue holding on in the face of the latest challenge?


Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

Nooshi Dadgostar, Leader of the Left Party

Nooshi Dadgostar is only seven months into the job after taking over from Jonas Sjöstedt in October, and she is the one who first issued the government a firm ultimatum with the threat of a no-confidence vote. Having been involved with the party since her teens, she has had a particular focus on the issue of housing which is what the current no-confidence vote revolves around.

The Left Party has never served in government but usually offers support to Social Democrat governments whenever they are in power. But when Löfven offered significant policy influence to the Centre and Liberal parties in exchange for their support, the Left Party at first said it would not support the government, and even after agreeing to do so, Sjöstedt made it clear the party considered itself “the left-wing opposition” rather than a supporter of the government.

Dadgostar has also stood firm on that, issuing Löfven an ultimatum over a bill on introducing market rates, saying that if the government did not either scrap the bill or negotiate with the Swedish Tenants’ Association within 48 hours, her party would work towards a vote of no confidence. Even though the government said it would talk to the Tenants’ Association (which it has to do anyway as part of the consultation process through which bills become law), Dadgostar held firm. She said that talking wasn’t enough; she wanted the proposal to be sent back to the drawing table for hard negotiations.


Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Jimmie Åkesson, Leader of the Sweden Democrats

Like Dadgostar, Åkesson has been involved with politics since his teens, but that’s where the similarities end – until now.

Åkesson took over leadership of the nationalist Sweden Democrats, which evolved from far-right organisations with neo-Nazi roots, and has worked to tone down its associations with racism, although tighter restrictions on immigration remains its core focus. Under Åkesson’s leadership, the party took a record 12.9 percent of the vote in the 2014 election, which increased to 17.5 percent four years later.

This growing vote share has caused ripples through the political landscape, forcing the centre-left government to accept support and policy influence (including on the introduction of market rents) from the right-of-centre opposition parties. 

Long frozen out of Swedish politics, the Sweden Democrats have recently received increasing cooperation from the Christian Democrats, Moderates and Liberals, with all four recently submitting a joint migration policy to the parliament to oppose the one proposed by the government.

The Left Party did not on its own have enough MPs to submit a no-confidence motion, and refused to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats on it. Åkesson’s party however does have enough MPs, and now plans to put forward the vote itself.


Jimmie Åkesson questions Prime Minister Stefan Löfven in parliament. Photo: Claudio Bresciani/TT

Andreas Norlén, parliamentary speaker and Moderate MP

The above politicians may be the ones who stoked the fire, but how will this crisis get solved? This is Sweden, so of course the answer is “probably over fika“.

Andreas Norlén is the parliamentary speaker, usually a low-profile role but one which comes into its own in moments of crisis. If the no-confidence vote succeeds, one possibility is that Norlén will start a talmansrunda, the political process where the speaker holds talks with all party leaders to work out who’s got the best chance at forming a government.

This happened not so long ago after the 2018 elections left neither bloc with a clear majority. Several rounds of talmansrunda took place in the four months it took to form a government, with news columnists analysing every detail down to the different pastries Norlén served to each party leader, one of whom brought home-baked cinnamon buns as a contribution to the talks.

Norlén is a member of the Moderate Party, which is unusual since the speaker usually comes from Sweden’s largest political party or bloc. This is another consequence of the increasingly fractured political landscape; at the time of the 2018 election, the centre-right bloc comprising the Moderates, Christian Democrats, Centre and Liberal Parties would not accept the support of the Sweden Democrats to form a government, leaving them without a majority, because this would have required cooperating with them on policy. But because the Sweden Democrats preferred the right-of-centre speaker candidate to the centre-left candidate, the Moderate candidate was named speaker.


Andreas Norlén’s fika with Löfven during one of the 2018 talmansrunda. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT 

Tune in to The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast on Saturday, where we’ll be talking about the government crisis.

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WORK PERMITS

Sweden’s Migration Agency rejects role in work permit salary threshold exemption plan

Sweden's Migration Agency has rejected a call for it to be responsible for drawing up a list of in-demand skills and professions exempted from the coming median-salary requirement for a work permit.

Published: 25 June 2024 12:02 CEST
Sweden's Migration Agency rejects role in work permit salary threshold exemption plan

In the conclusions to a government inquiry into setting the median salary threshold, judge Ann-Jeanette Eriksson proposed that the Migration Agency be made responsible for drawing up annual national and regional lists of professions which should be exempted from the threshold.

The list of proposed exemptions could then, she recommended, either be passed to the government for a final decision, or else apply immediately. 

In its response to consultation, the Migration Agency said that it did not believe that it was the right agency to draw up the list. 

“The Migration Agency considers that the task of preparing these proposals should be given to the Swedish Public Employment Service which is the expert agency on labour market issues,” the agency said. 

“As the expert agency, the Swedish Public Employment Service has much broader competence when it comes to judging the demand for labour.”

The employment service could then consult the Migration Agency and other relevant agencies before passing the list to the government, it recommended. 

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The Swedish Public Employment Service did not echo the Migration Agency’s call in its own response. 

It did, however, recommend an alternative system proposed by Eriksson, under which the Migration Agency, rather than the government, would have the final say on which jobs should be exempted. 

“The alternative proposal would mean a simpler process and shorter handling time”, the service said. 

The Migration Agency, however, said it did not support this alternative proposal, without giving any reasons for this.

It did call for a consideration over “whether it might be necessary to consult with other authorities before the proposals are made to the government”.

The agency also called for more specific language on what “considerations around migration law” it should apply when deciding on which professions to exempt. 

In some of its comments on the detail or proposals, the Migration Agency highlighted that the law should specify that work permit applicants need to be offered a salary that meets or exceeds Sweden’s median salary “at the time of application”, and also called for more specifics on how to define a “monthly salary”.

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Eriksson also recommended that Migration Agency be tasked with deciding which industries should be entirely excluded from the work permit system because they have historically had problems with the exploitation of labour migrants and abuse of the work permit system.  

“The possibility of excluding certain groups of jobs is an important tool in the work against exploitation in the workplace,” the agency said of this proposal.

But it said that to carry out this task properly, it would need more information on what criteria should be applied when making such exclusions as well as increased powers to cooperate and share information with other agencies involved in combatting exploitation and abuse in the workplace. 

“For this work to be even more effective, more tools are needed that enable more thorough controls. This is both about developing regulations that provide the Migration Agency with wider powers to carry out checks that facilitate cooperation and information exchange between relevant authorities and organisations,” it said. 

When it comes to the impact of the proposals on its own internal workings, the agency said it agreed broadly with the Eriksson’s judgement that they would not increase the workload at the agency.

The extra work required to carry out its new tasks would, it said, be largely offset by the lower work load following from the proposed abolition of the spårbyte, or “track change” system which allows rejected asylum seekers to stay in the country and apply for work permits. 

It did warn, however, that the changes could lead to even longer processing times for work permit applications. 

“The Migration Agency would like to highlight that the proposed changes to the law, and in particular the salary threshold and the regional and national exemptions from this threshold might affect handling times for work permit cases,” it wrote. 

“The regulatory framework around labour migration is already complex today and involves several decision points. Judging whether an application concerns a job for which there is a national or regional shortage will require a new decision point which will require education and preparation.” 

To reduce the extra demand on resources, the agency called on the government to make the regulation “as precise as possible”, leaving as little room as possible for different interpretations, which would then allow the agency to speed up processing and even digitalise some decisions. 

If the plans to raise the work permit salary threshold from 80 percent of the median salary to 100 percent go through, the idea is that they would come into effect in June next year (although work permit holders renewing their permits would get a one-year grace period).

But the proposal has received a slew of criticism from Swedish business organisations, which argue that it would make it harder to fill essential roles and attract international talent.

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