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POLITICS IN SWEDEN

Politics in Sweden: Sexual abuse allegations, ‘big drama’ and Vikings

Here's the roundup of the week in Swedish politics, in the latest edition of The Local's Politics in Sweden column.

Politics in Sweden: Sexual abuse allegations, 'big drama' and Vikings
Sara Skyttedal during the EU election campaign in 2019. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

The perhaps biggest story in Swedish politics this week is European Parliament member Sara Skyttedal’s accusation that a party colleague sexually abused her nine years ago.

Skyttedal, for those who don’t know, is a high-profile and famously outspoken member of the right-wing Christian Democrat party and the former leader of its youth wing.

She recently reported party colleague Johan Ingerö to the police, a report which was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired on the alleged 2014 incident.

Ingerö is also a high-profile member of the party, a former head of press and policy analyst who was appointed party secretary (the person who is responsible for the day-to-day political work, second in rank only to the party leader) after the 2022 election.

He denies Skyttedal’s allegations. She claims she was woken up in a hotel room in Stockholm by his hand on her thigh, which she tried to remove several times. It was only when she shouted and physically pushed him off that he left her alone, she says.

Ingerö quit his post shortly after the story emerged, but party leader Ebba Busch told media that the reason for his departure was not the sexual abuse allegations.

Instead, she said the party needed someone with “different strengths” as party secretary, as the party makes the transition from a campaigning opposition party to a member of the government.

A separate recent conflict with Ingerö is what prompted Skyttedal to file the police report (according to Ingerö, she did so as revenge; according to Skyttedal, she did so because his aggression when discussing the issue reawakened memories and made her want to stand up for herself).

That conflict was sparked when Skyttedal in an interview with the ETC newspaper revealed that she had smoked cannabis during her time as an MEP to combat depression, in a country where such use is legal (which it isn’t in Sweden).

She then did a long interview with public broadcaster SVT, in which she said that she believed Sweden should decriminalise cannabis – a position that runs directly counter to the official position of the Christian Democrats, which resulted in party leader Busch saying Skyttedal would not be able to represent the party if she kept using cannabis.

A side effect is that cannabis is now top of the agenda in Swedish politics.

Most political parties are vehemently against changing Sweden’s “zero tolerance” approach to legalising cannabis, despite even the Public Health Agency calling for at least an inquiry into the ban. Here’s an article from The Local’s archive which explains the debate – and how likely it is that Sweden will ever legalise cannabis.

Is Sweden heading for another government crisis?

The words “government crisis” became almost synonymous with former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s fragile-yet-relatively-long-lasting rule, which created and saw a series of coalition agreements fall while his minority government fended off more no-confidence votes than anyone else in Swedish history.

The Sweden Democrats’ finance spokesperson Oscar Sjöstedt last week hinted that current Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson could face a similar fate if the government and the far-right party do not agree on by how much to lower the so-called “reduction obligation”.

The reduction obligation mandates fuel suppliers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their fuels. The current reduction obligation means that diesel emissions must be reduced by 30.5 percent and petrol by 7.8 percent. The Sweden Democrats want to cut that to zero.

Sjöstedt vowed that failure to agree would spark “big drama, I can tell you that”.

Why Vikings have sparked political turbulence in a small Swedish town

Speaking of government crises.

The local coalition in Hässleholm in southern Sweden is falling apart, after the council’s Sweden Democrat mayor got embroiled in a conflict involving an elderly care home, the alleged hiring of something close to hitmen and a Viking village.

A Viking association run by local businessman Oddvar Lönnerkrantz is accusing mayor Hanna Nilsson of trying to hire him as muscle to put pressure on a resident who was attempting to block the council’s purchase of a building for an elderly care home.

Lönnercrantz told the news site Frilagt that he understood it as Nilsson suggesting that they threaten or assault the man to get him to drop his appeal against the purchase.

Nilsson on the other hand denies those allegations and instead claims Lönnerkrantz has been trying to blackmail her.

The Moderates and the Christian Democrats have now pulled out of Hässleholm’s coalition government with the Sweden Democrats, calling on Nilsson to resign.

Politics in Sweden is a weekly column by Editor Emma Löfgren looking at the big talking points and issues in Swedish politics. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive an email alert when the column is published. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.

Member comments

  1. Emma, as a relative newcomer to Sweden I’ve been confused since the election why news media seem to give the governing coalition of parties a pass on whether they are governing “with” the Sweden Democrats. The SD seem not to have such high-profile appointments but they do have appointments (like in this story) and they certainly guide/set policy and provide needed votes. That’s governing together, even if there are technicalities that help the governing coalition avoid admitting that they’re in bed with the Sweden Democrats. Why is this allowed?

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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.

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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