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KEY POINTS: Everything you need to know about Sweden’s new government

Which political heavyweights were given positions in the new government? How many ministers are there from each party? Which ministries has Ulf Kristersson scrapped?

Published: 18 October 2022 15:50 CEST
Updated: 23 October 2022 08:22 CEST
KEY POINTS: Everything you need to know about Sweden’s new government
Sweden's new government. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT

Who are the new ministers in Kristersson’s cabinet?

Kristersson’s new cabinet features ministers from three different parties – the Moderates, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats. The fourth party in the right-wing coalition, the far-right nationalist Sweden Democrats, do not have ministers in the government despite being the largest party in their bloc, but will still have substantial influence over the new government’s policy.

Considering this new government is a complete change of power from the left-wing Social Democrats to a right-wing coalition government, every minister post has changed, as well as some ministries. Below is a rundown of the most notable appointments, you can see a full list of all the ministers appointed here.

Facts and figures

In terms of the share of ministers, the largest party in the government is the Moderates, with 12 ministers. The two smaller government parties, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, each received roughly the same number of ministers: 6 for the Christian Democrats and 5 for the Liberals.

Of the 23 ministers in the new cabinet, just under half (11) are female. This is similar to the outgoing Social Democrat government, where 11 of 22 ministers were female.

Who are the Moderate ministers?

First off, we’ve got the heavyweight roles. Sweden’s new Finance Minister is Elisabeth Svantesson. She is the Moderate financial spokesperson, and she repeatedly appeared alongside Kristersson during the election campaign to discuss policy proposals such as high-cost protection for energy bills.

The new Justice Minister is also a high-up Moderate: Gunnar Strömmer, Moderate Party Secretary. Strömmer has previously worked as a lawyer, and is also the founder of legal charity Centrum för rättvisa, which stands up for individual rights and freedoms, who are notably deeply critical of the new government’s policy proposals.

The Defence Minister is Pål Jonson, who will also head up the Defence Department, where he will be joined by Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oscar Bohlin. Jonson is a trained political scientist with a doctoral degree in the science of war. He has been the General Secretary of the Swedish Atlantic Committee and has also worked at the Swedish Defence Research Agency. He has been political spokesperson for the Moderates since 2019.

Sweden’s new Foreign Minister is Tobias Billström, who has been a Moderate Party spokesperson since 2002 and has previously been the party’s spokesperson on migration and integration issues. He was Migration Minister in the last Moderate government under Fredrik Reinfeldt between 2006 and 2014, where he worked to increase labour migration to Sweden and spoke out in favour of a common European asylum and migration policy. He is also leader of the Moderate’s parliamentary group.

The Migration Minister is Maria Malmer Stenergard, also a Moderate, who has been Moderate Party migration spokesperson since 2019. She is a trained lawyer and has called for “tightened up and long-term sustainable migration policy” where integration is a key aspect. She has called for a pause on accepting quota refugees, wants to make it easier for foreign doctoral students to stay in Sweden, and criticised the previous Social Democrat government for not doing enough to combat so-called ‘talent deportations’.

The other Moderate ministers in the next government are EU Minister Jessica Roswall, Foreign Aid Minister Johan Forsell, Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oscar Bohlin, Social Services Minister Kamilla Waltersson-Grönwall, Minister for the Elderly and Social Insurance Anna Tenje, Financial Market Minister Niklas Dykman and Culture Minister Parisa Liljestrand.

What about the smaller parties?

The most interesting appointments here include Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch’s new role as the Energy and Business Minister, as well as Deputy Prime Minister, and Liberal Leader Johan Pehrson taking over as Sweden’s next Labour Market and Integration Minister (so you’ll no doubt be hearing a lot about him at The Local over the next four years).

Johan Pehrson was tipped to become Education Minister, but that role has instead gone to Mats Persson, the Liberal Party’s financial spokesperson. The Liberals also supplied the Equality Minister (Paulina Brandberg), the Schools Minister (Lotta Edholm) and the Climate Minister, Romina Pourmokhtari, who at 26 is Sweden’s youngest-ever minister.

Aside from leader Ebba Busch, the other Christian Democrat ministers in the government are Peter Kullgren as Rural Affairs Minister, Andreas Carlson as Infrastructure and Housing Minister, Jakob Forssmed as Minister for Social Affairs, Acko Ankarberg as Health Minister and Erik Slottner as Minister for Public Administration.

Have any departments changed?

Yes. The Ministry for the Environment has been merged with the Ministry for Business, creating the new Ministry for Climate and Business, which is headed by Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch. This means that instead of heading up the Ministry for the Environment, Climate Minister Romina Pourmokhtari will be working underneath Busch in the Climate and Business Ministry on environment issues.

The Ministry for Enterprise and Innovation has also been scrapped.

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INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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