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ANALYSIS: Magdalena Andersson’s challenge as Social Democrat leader

Magdalena Andersson, nicknamed "the bulldozer", is set to be elected as leader of the Social Democrat Party on Thursday – and she is likely to soon become Sweden's first woman Prime Minister.

Published: 4 November 2021 08:55 CET
Updated: 4 November 2021 16:06 CET
ANALYSIS: Magdalena Andersson's challenge as Social Democrat leader
Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson on one of her 'budget walks', when the government brings its budget proposal to parliament. Photo: Magnus Hjalmarson Neideman/SvD/TT

The 54-year-old finance minister and heir apparent to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven will face a fight for political survival in taking the reins of the Social Democrats ahead of combative general elections scheduled for September 2022.

The only candidate standing, the academic and former competitive swimmer, was elected party leader at the Social Democrats’ annual congress in Gothenburg at 4pm on Thursday.

Löfven has announced he will resign in the near future, albeit with no timeframe. When he goes, the only thing standing between Andersson and making history as the first woman to form a Swedish government is a vote in parliament.

The feat almost sounds anachronistic in a country that has long championed gender equality, but which has at times cursed senior women in politics.

Anna Lindh, foreign minister and fellow Social Democrat, died after a stabbing attack in a department store in 2003.

Mona Sahlin, the first woman to head the Social Democrats and a deputy prime minister, was sidelined first by a spending scandal in 1995 that involved Toblerone chocolate, and later resigned in 2011 after electoral defeat.

Provided Löfven steps down and Andersson wins the ensuing parliamentary vote, she will become Sweden’s first woman prime minister.

‘Hard-working’

The job could yet prove a poisoned chalice – she will be tasked with trying to keep her party in power at a time when it is close to its historic-low approval ratings.

Andersson describes herself as a “nice, hard-working woman” who likes to be in charge.

In political circles, she has built a reputation for bluntness that can rub some people the wrong way in a country where politeness is the law of the land.

A recent programme profiling her on public television channel SVT was entitled The Bulldozer.

“People even say they are scared of her which is kind of funny,” said Anders Lindberg, political editor-in-chief of Swedish daily Aftonbladet, which describes itself as independent social democratic.

“These kind of elite political scientists or professors of economics saying that they are afraid of her,” he added.

Finance minister under Löfven for seven years, in Brussels she defended fiscal restraint when Sweden joined Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands as the “frugal four” who counselled a more restrained European Covid-19 recovery plan.

Swimming gold

She is a close friend of Löfven but comes from a different background to the former welder turned prime minister.

Born in the university town of Uppsala, she is the only daughter of a university professor and a teacher who first made a name for herself in the water, where she twice won gold in the Swedish national junior championship.

In parallel with studies at the Stockholm School of Economics – and a spell at Harvard – she immersed herself in the life of a sosse, having joined the Social Democrats’ youth league aged 16. In 1996, she became an aide to Prime Minister Göran Persson.

“I think she’s very keen now to present herself as being someone who has done the footwork… But of course she is a from an academic elite,” Jonas Hinnfors, a professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg, told AFP.

The mother-of-two married to a professor enjoys mountain climbing and heavy metal band System of a Down.

Still relatively unknown to the general public, she will have less than a year to put herself on the map to avoid a fleeting hold on power.

She may also battle to prove that she is her own person, rather than a third iteration of the Löfven government, Lindberg believes.

“That will be the narrative conflict in the Swedish election,” he said.

Article by AFP’s Marc Préel with Viken Kantarci

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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.”

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