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2022 SWEDISH ELECTION

INTERVIEW: ‘Tough rhetoric on immigration? I don’t think so’

Justice Minister Morgan Johansson is the face of the Social Democrats' new tougher position on crime and, arguably, also immigration. The Local caught up with him on the campaign trail in Kalmar.

INTERVIEW: 'Tough rhetoric on immigration? I don't think so'
Photo: Richard Orange/The Local

Morgan Johansson, Sweden’s justice minister, has been visiting the chunk of forest south of Kalmar where work will begin early next year on a new prison for more than 340 detainees.

Given the way his party is competing with the opposition over who can put the most extra people behind bars, those extra cells will be needed regardless of who wins the election on September 11th. 

“We have had too short punishments for quite severe crimes,” Johansson declares, when we meet him outside the party’s election shed, or valstuga, in Kalmar, the historic naval city on Swedens southeast coast. “We’ve had a level of gang-related crime now in Sweden that has increased in the last years in a way that has really made us think ‘how do we turn this around’.”

Asked for evidence that longer prison sentences actually reduce crime, he fell back on common sense reasoning around rehabilitation and incapacitation, rather referring to any academic studies. 

“For the most active criminals, the ones who are doing the most crimes, I really think that we need to have longer punishments in order to work with them and to rehabilitate them,” he says. “We have also had a problem that we have sent those people for a couple of months in prison, and then they are out again, committing more crimes.  We have to get those people who are committing the most crime off the streets. Otherwise, they will recruit new generations into these gangs. And they will also be some kind of bad role models for the young.” 

But the Social Democrats’ approach to crime is not simply to fill up prisons, but also to enact a version of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s famous formulation, “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, with harsher prison sentences combined with more prevention initiatives. 

“We need to do a lot more on the issues concerning young people: schools, education, after school activities, and social services,” Johansson says. “We have to combine these two things.” 

READ OUR OTHER PARTY LEADER INTERVIEWS: 

‘I don’t recognise that our party has used that kind of rhetoric’

As well as being tough on crime, many immigrants in Sweden feel that Johansson’s party has begun to adopt some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Sweden Democrats, with readers of The Local telling us they have been made distraught by the way immigration has been debated. 

“I don’t recognise that our party has used that kind of rhetoric,” Johansson retorts. “What we are always trying to say is that if there are too many people coming in a short period of time, and these people are not integrated, they don’t get jobs, and they don’t have the possibility to learn the language and so on, that will cause social problems. I don’t recognise all that we have had a harsh or tough rhetoric against immigrants. I don’t think so.” 

He does however agree that the current election campaign was unusually nasty in tone. 

“Yes, I do [think that]. We’ve had a right-wing extremist party, the Sweden Democrats, that has a very hateful rhetoric against immigrants, against Muslims, against anyone who is not ethnically Swedish, and now, they are up on levels of almost 20 percent, they might become the second biggest party in this election.” 

“They find their role models in Hungary and Poland. They have a party leader who, on the edge of the war in Ukraine, couldn’t choose between Biden and Putin. I’d say that there is really very much at stake in this Swedish election, about what kind of country Sweden will be.” 

Labour Market Testing will not mean a longer wait for work permits 

For readers of the The Local, one of the Social Democrats’ most worrying policies is the plan to bring back Labour Market Testing, the restrictive former system for work permits, in which unions and the government decide which skills and industries Swedish has a shortage of, only approving permits for jobs in these fields.

Johansson is adamant, however, that the return of the system will not make it harder for skilled foreign workers to come to Sweden, or make it more difficult for businesses to recruit the international employees they need. 

“If we need it, then we will have IT professionals coming to Sweden,” he protests. “Nowadays, Sweden has the most liberal legislation of any country in the whole world.”

“We’re the only country in the world that allows work migration for professions that we do not have any lack of, to wait tables, to work at McDonald’s, to clean people’s homes, and everything like that. We have a lot of people already living in Sweden who could do those jobs.” 

When The Local argues that by adding in an extra layer of bureaucracy, the new system would mean a longer wait for highly educated foreign workers, he argues that the opposite is in fact the case. 

“On the contrary, because the total numbers of applicants will go down, the number of applications will be much smaller,” he argued. “In the old days, when we had this kind of legislation, there were no long waiting lists. We can focus more resources on the people that we really need.”

Under the current system, he continues, foreign people are being exploited by employers providing low wages and poor living and working conditions, while the work permit system is being abused by organised criminal groups. 

‘It is a necessity to speak the language’

When it comes to another new possible hurdle for foreigners living in Sweden — the prospect of a language requirement for permanent residency and citizenship — Johansson said his understanding was that the Social Democrats would seek to bring both in if they regain power after the next election. 

“The decision from the parliament, on the new migration legislation is that you’re going to have a requirement for permanent residence,” he says, and what has been discussed is to also have requirements at a higher level if you go on to be a citizen, then there will be a big, big discussion, how is that going to be implemented and tested, and so on.” 

It is reasonable to expect those who are awarded permanent residence to have reached an adequate level of Swedish, he argues.

“I think that if you’re going to have permanent residence, that means that you’re going to stay here for the rest of your life, and if you’re going to do that, it is a necessity to speak the language that most other people are speaking in this country, in order to get a job and to integrate yourself.” 

And with that, Johansson is pulled away by his press secretary to chat to locals in Kalmar who have gathered to meet him at the valstuga, after which he is due to visit local police in an area outside the historically sleepy coastal city recently affected by a series of fatal shootings.

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SWEDEN ELECTS

Sweden Elects: New finance minister under fire after first long interview

In our weekly Sweden Elects newsletter, The Local's editor Emma Löfgren explains the key events to keep an eye on in Swedish politics this week.

Sweden Elects: New finance minister under fire after first long interview

Hej,

Elisabeth Svantesson has given her first long interview as finance minister, speaking to the Svenska Dagbladet daily just days after she presented her first budget on behalf of Sweden’s new, right-wing government.

The government has already faced accusations of deprioritising the climate crisis, and Svantesson conceded in the interview that its planned investment in nuclear power (which is a low-emission source of energy, but takes time to develop, so it pays off only in the long run) would also make it difficult to reach Sweden’s climate targets within the next decade.

Asked what will happen if Sweden does not meet its Agenda 2030 target, the sustainable development targets agreed by the United Nations, by that year, she said: “It would mean that we don’t meet the targets. If we don’t we don’t, but our ambition is to steer towards that goal.”

That quote, which was perceived as far more laissez-faire than the situation warrants, was met with criticism from the opposition.

“I’m astounded at how you sign agreements and vote for legislation in parliament only to ignore it when you feel like it,” said Green Party leader Per Bolund.

The Social Democrats’ former finance minister Mikael Damberg gave a diplomatic-or-patronising answer (a school of conflict avoidance that can be perfected only by a party that’s more used to being in power than not being in power) and guessed that Svantesson had perhaps not meant it like that. “Svantesson has had a lot to do this week, maybe she’s tired.”

Speaking of interviews, one Swedish newsroom has not yet been getting them, at least not with senior ministers. One of public broadcaster SVT’s top political interviewers, Anders Holmberg, points out that all four right-wing party leaders and several ministers have declined to appear on his “30 minuter”, a show famous for putting hard-hitting questions to politicians and senior decision-makers. It’s of course not mandatory to say yes to all interviews even as a politician, but it’s an unusual move.

It’s interesting that Bolund tried to attack Svantesson specifically on not following through on commitments. This has been a recurring piece of criticism since the new government was elected two months ago.

The budget was more conservative (in this particular case I mean conservative as in cautious rather than as in right-wing) than you might have expected based on the government’s election pledges, and it’s not the only campaign promise that they’ve been forced to backtrack on.

“The central thing is that they’re breaking most of their major election promises at the same time as as they’re not really managing to take care of the big social problems Sweden faces today,” Damberg told SVT.

To be fair, you would kind of expect him to say this (when has a political opposition party ever praised the government’s budget?), but significantly, the criticism hasn’t only come from the left-wing opposition.

Moderate Party politicians in the powerful Skåne region earlier this month slammed their party for failing to deliver the promised support to those suffering sky high power bills in the southern Swedish county.

“There are effectively no reforms, and they’re not putting in place the policies they campaigned for in the election,” the head of the liberal think tank Timbro told the Aftonbladet newspaper about the budget.

It will be interesting to see whether the label as “promise breakers” sticks, and whether that will affect the right-wing parties in the next election.

Did you know?

Parties make more and more pledges during election campaigns. Ahead of the 2014 election, a whopping 1,848 vallöften (election promises) were made, according to research by Gothenburg University, up from 326 in 1994.

You may not believe this, because the stereotypical image of the dishonest politician perhaps unfairly endures, but research shows that most politicians keep most of their election promises most of the time.

Swedish parties in a single-party government and coalition governments with a joint manifesto tend to deliver on between 80 and 90 percent of their vallöften, according to political scientist Elin Naurin. For coalition governments without a joint manifesto, it ranges from 50 to 70 percent.

In other news

the deputy mayor of the town of Norrtälje, who got 15 seconds – technically 26 seconds – of fame after he was left speechless when a reporter asked him to defend hefty pay rises for top councillors has resigned, saying he wants to take responsibility for what happened.

He also told SVT about his long and very awkward silence on camera that his brain had simply blacked out after having worked for 13 hours straight and gone nine hours without food in the post-election frenzy.

Sweden Elects is a weekly column by Editor Emma Löfgren looking at the big talking points and issues after the Swedish election. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive the column as a newsletter in their email inbox each week. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.

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