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POLITICS

KEY POINTS: What you need to know about Sweden’s next budget

The new government will have to govern on the right-wing opposition's budget after it won a vote in parliament. But what does the new budget actually entail?

magdalena andersson outside parliament holding the 2022 budget
Former finance minister, now possibly future prime minister Magdalena Andersson before budget debates in September this year. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

Just hours after Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson became Sweden’s first female prime minister in a historic vote, the Swedish parliament held another historic vote, passing what will be the first governing budget co-authored by a far-right party.

The budget, negotiated jointly by the conservative Moderates and Christian Democrats and the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, uses the government’s budget as a basis, with “marginal adjustments”, said Andersson at a press conference to newswire TT.

It then sparked a political crisis, which saw the Green Party quit the government coalition, Andersson resign just hours after being appointed, then Andersson being re-nominated again. Parliament is set to vote on her again on Monday, but no matter what happens, the budget has been passed and will stand at least until the next government can put forward an amendment budget in spring.

The main points in the opposition’s budget are as follows:

Taxes

Changes to jobbskatteavdrag – a tax reduction for work income, which will now only be offered to those working or receiving a pension. The government’s budget proposed extending this tax reduction to those who are on long-term sick leave or receiving unemployment benefits.

In figures, those working full time will pay roughly 1,800 kronor less in tax per year. This is expected to cost the state 8 billion kronor. Pensioners with an average pension of 13,000 kronor per month will also pay 1,800 kronor less in taxes per year, which is expected to cost 4.2 billion kronor.

Finally, the opposition’s budget proposal includes lower petrol and diesel taxes – these will be reduced by 50 öre per litre from May 1st 2022. The Moderates originally wanted this to be a reduction of 1 krona per litre, so this appears to be a compromise between the three opposition parties. This is expected to cost 2.4 billion kronor in 2022, and 3.3 billion over a full year.

Law and order

The opposition’s budget has a clear focus on law and order, differing on a number of points from the government’s proposal.

It proposes increasing salaries for police officers, at a cost of 400 million kronor in 2022, increasing to 800 million in 2023 and 1,200 million in 2024.

It will also offer 150 million kronor to the National Forensic Centre (NFC) – the Swedish national agency responsible for forensics.

Furthermore, the police force will be getting 300 million kronor to spend on technology, some of which will be spent on more security cameras.

75 million kronor will go to the Migration Agency to increase capacity in immigration detention centres, with this increasing to 150 million kronor from 2023. In addition, 10 million kronor per year will also be put aside for electronic ankle monitors “as an additional measure”.

Finally, other judicial authorities such as customs and the coastguard will be given 525 million kronor, rising to 805 million in 2023 and 1,035 million in 2024.

Work and education

The opposition’s proposal, unlike the government’s, will not include an increased budget for certain measures designed to get newly arrived immigrants into work.

Their budget does, however, suggest “lower costs for employing long-term unemployed”, as well as resources to “strengthen work on work environment” but it is unclear as to what exactly this means.

The opposition budget also proposes to provide the government with 5 million kronor per year for “a large-scale benefit reform”.

The Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) will be tasked with preparing for an extra hour of class-time per day, with resources allocated to this from 2023 onwards.

400 million kronor will also be allocated to “combatting knowledge loss”, by, for example, offering extra classes for students who require it.

This will be accompanied by 50 million kronor allocated to improving school inspections.

Healthcare

3.4 billion kronor will be earmarked for healthcare, to go towards reducing waiting times caused by the pandemic.

In addition to this, 2.9 billion kronor will be allocated to increasing the health service’s treatment capacity – currently lowest per capita in the EU. Measures for eradicating cervical cancer will also be allocated funds – with 25 million kronor per year going towards screening and vaccinations. HIV-prevention measures will receive 25 million kronor in 2022, 50 million in 2023 and 75 million in 2024.

Families

The government’s “family week” proposal – an additional three days per parent per year of paid leave for parents of children between 6 and 16 – has been altered in the opposition’s budget, with parents still able to take this leave, although it will be unpaid.

2 billion kronor will go towards smaller classes in preschools, as well as 500 million kronor for parent support programmes – “to help parents and children who are experiencing difficulties”.

Immigration

The opposition believes that Sweden “needs responsible immigration policy”, wishing to “work together to reform immigration policy after the next election”. However, the budget does not include any specific funds allocated towards immigration measures.

The opposition mentions the following points in their budget, but says only that it wants to work towards them after the next election in September 2022 – so they won’t come into force as part of this budget proposal:

  • Asylum laws will be adapted to reflect the legal minimum level according to EU law.
  • Labour migration will be limited, partially by introducing a higher minimum salary requirement.
  • More deportations and asylum application rejections will be carried out.
  • Work to combat illegal immigration as well as those who live in Sweden illegally will be prioritised.

Climate and energy

The opposition’s budget allocates “resources” to the Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten), to carry out a programme for CO2 storage, aiming to capture and store two million tons of CO2 per year, intending to raise its budget by 30 billion kronor between 2026-2046.

600 million kronor will be allocated to extending Sweden’s charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, increasing to 1 billion kronor in 2023.

The full budget proposal is available here (Swedish).

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POLITICS IN SWEDEN

OPINION: Is Sweden complacent about social media influence of the radical-right?

With the think tank linked to the Sweden Democrats openly recruiting the next generation of far-right social media 'influencers', why is Sweden so complacent about moves to shift public opinion to the radical right, asks The Local's Nordic editor Richard Orange.

OPINION: Is Sweden complacent about social media influence of the radical-right?

The radical right in Sweden is at least open about what it’s trying to do.

The homepage of Oikos, the think tank set up by Mattias Karlsson, the former right-hand man of Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats, is currently recruiting the first 15 of “a new generation” of “conservative” online propagandists. 

The think tank – whose controlling foundation has been criticised for refusing to reveal the true origin of 5 million kronor in funding – this week launched its new Illustra Academy, which aims to train an army of young, far-right “creators” to help win over minds on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. 

Successful applicants, it promises, will get the chance “to meet leading actors in social media and digital political influencing”.

They will get “mentorship from established political influencers”, build “valuable contacts with influencers, digital opinion-makers, creatives, politicians and possible future employers”, and meet “businesses, political organisations, communications agencies and media actors”. 

This programme is being set up by Andreas Palmlöv, one of the many top Sweden Democrats who went to the US after Donald Trump was elected president to work for an increasingly radicalised Republican Party, serving as an intern for the former Speaker of Congress Kevin McCarthy.

After his return to Sweden, Palmlöv was photographed meeting Gregg Keller, a US lobbyist he says he met through the Leadership Institute, an organisation backed by a who’s who of US billionaire donors which has over the past ten years spent 8 million kronor training up young “conservatives” in Europe.

Karlsson, Åkesson’s former right-hand man, has even closer links to the US, holding at least one meeting with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, and attending the wedding of the pro-Trump US conservative media profile Candace Owens in 2019.   

As a British citizen, I’m perhaps overly sensitive about the influence of conservative, libertarian donors and their think tanks, and of the efforts to use social media to push public opinion towards the radical right. 

Vote Leave, which led the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, started its life at 55 Tufton Street, the townhouse near the UK Parliament where the country’s most powerful “dark money” think tanks are based, while Matthew Elliot, its chief executive, was a Tufton Street veteran. 

Since the UK left the EU, the ruling Conservative Party has been increasingly captured by these think tanks and their wealthy backers.   

Ministers, former ministers and Conservative MPs now happily speak alongside radical right figures at lavish conferences like the National Conservatism UK conference part-funded by Christian pro-Trump US foundations, or the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference part-funded by Paul Marshall and Christopher Chandler, the two billionaires who are the most open and prominent funders of attempts to shift the UK to the radical, libertarian right. 

Conservative MPs and former ministers have over the past two years been paid a total of £600,000 (8 million kronor) to appear on GB News, the Fox News clone jointly owned by Marshall and Chandler.

The Legatum Institute, Chandler’s own think tank, pretty much dictated the UK’s Brexit policy while Boris Johnson was prime minister, while during Liz Truss’s brief premiership, the Tufton Street think tanks supplied much of her team.

When her attempt to drive through their radical libertarian economic programme blew up spectacularly, she was forced to resign. But they haven’t given up, with Truss returning in February with the new Popular Conservatism group. 

I had always believed that the UK politics was immune to US levels of big donor influence, that the Conservative Party could never go the way of the Republican Party in the US, and it turns out I was wrong. 

So is that same naivety playing out in Sweden? 

The Oikos think tank has already started hosting international conservative conferences along the lines of ARC, with a conference at the Sundbyholms Slott castle outside Eskilstuna last year. 

When Social Democrat opposition leader Magdalena Andersson raised questions earlier this year about the funding of Henrik Jönsson, a popular YouTube debater, she was sharply criticised by commentators of both left and right for seeking to smear a critic without providing evidence

But in the US, there are billionaire-funded ‘educational’ YouTube channels like PragerU that follow a very similar format to Jönsson’s. Jönsson’s videos reliably follow the same talking points, questioning whether global warming is really causing extreme weather, spread disinformation about wind farms, call for Sweden’s public broadcasters to be abolished, and claim migrants have trashed the economy. 

And when a donor last year asked Gunnar Strömmer, now Sweden’s Justice Minister, how to give 350,000 kronor to the Moderates without having to identify himself under party financing laws, in part of a sting by TV4’s Kalla Fakta programme, Strömmer advised him to give it directly to right-wing “opinion-makers”, meaning, presumably, people like Jönsson. 

Despite the uproar, Jönsson has never explicitly denied receiving funding from outside organisations, only that such funding does not influence his output. 

“I am quite open about the fact that I willingly take money from all decent organisations and private individuals,” he told the Dagens ETC newspaper, while declining to give any further details. “But no one controls what I say,” he added. 

He has admitted that the website for his Energiupproret campaign, which blamed green policy and the shutdown of nuclear power stations for high power prices in the run-up to the 2022 election, was built by Näringslivets Mediaservice, a right wing social media outfit the precise funding of which was always unclear, although it was linked to Stiftelsen Svenskt Näringsliv, a foundation set up partly by the Confederation of Swedish Industry. 

The founders of Oikos’ new influencer education programme would probably argue that nothing is stopping the political left and centre from raising funds to train up young social media influencers in exactly the same way. 

Left-wing parties are not above taking donations. Approached by the same donor as part of the Kalla Fakta undercover report, representatives of the centre-left Social Democrats – as well as the Christian Democrats, Liberals, and Sweden Democrats on the right – also recommended ways around party finance laws.

But do we really want the UK or Sweden to follow the path the US has taken in recent decades, where a handful of billionaires with radical right opinions have aggressively pumped money into think tanks and media outfits and so succeeded in pushing one of the main parties towards previously fringe political opinions? 

It didn’t need to be this way.

When Sweden was developing its new party financing laws back in 2016, experts warned the then government must not to allow the identity of donors to be hidden behind foundations, the key method used by so-called dark money in the US, but the loophole was left open by the law.

It’s not just Oikos, which is funded by an opaque foundation, Insamlingsstiftelsen för Svensk Konservatism (The Fundraising Foundation for Swedish Conservatism), which uses this loophole. 

When caught in the sting by the Kalla Fakta programme, a Social Democrat also suggested that the donor set up a foundation to hide their identity. 

It may be that money from US billionaires, big companies, or indeed from other states, is not yet being spent in Sweden in a way that can alter the political landscape, but because neither think tanks nor influencers need to give much information about who funds them, it’s impossible to know. 

In the UK, the danger may soon be averted. No one seems to take the new outfit fronted by Liz Truss too seriously, and the general election later this year should offer the chance to clean up the country’s politics.  

Nonetheless, I feel like I’ve come very close to losing my original homeland to the kind of political developments seen in the US. I don’t want to lose my adopted country too.

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