Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Impact of new work permit law is bigger than anyone has foreseen

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

Published: 14 October 2023 09:30 CEST
Inside Sweden: Impact of new work permit law is bigger than anyone has foreseen
Ana Surguladze, spokesperson for the Work Permit Holders Association, at a demonstration in Sundbyberg on October 11th 2023. Photo: Paul O'Mahony/The Local

Hej,

This week we’ve been working a lot on the story of how Sweden’s soon-to-be-raised salary requirement for work permit holders is going to affect thousands of foreigners already living and working in the country.

The impact of this may be bigger than anyone has foreseen. For every work permit holder losing their right to stay in Sweden, there’s a company losing a worker. The country is losing a taxpayer. There are potentially family members who are no longer able to stay. There are foreigners who may not be directly affected, but worry that the goalposts may change for them too one day.

I wrote a LinkedIn post about it, but what I really want to do is get as many people as possible to read this article for which more than 200 people who will be directly affected by the new salary requirement shared their story. 

My colleague Paul O’Mahony also spoke to the Work Permit Holders Association, who formed a human chain outside a Migration Agency office to protest against the retroactivity of the new law, which also affects people who submitted their application ages ago but haven’t received an answer.

You can listen to his interviews on the latest episode of The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast. Former education minister Anna Ekström happened to be a guest on this episode, so we also took the opportunity to ask for her thoughts.

The Work Permit Holders Association will hold a new demonstration at Mynttorget in central Stockholm on Sunday, October 15th, from 12-3pm.

Thank you to everyone for trusting The Local with your stories. It’s a privilege to be in touch with you all and to try to raise awareness in the Swedish public debate about the impact of law changes like these on foreign citizens.

In other news

Sweden has been running evacuation flights from the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, and as I’m writing this on Friday afternoon just hours before the next flight is set to take off, there’s not much I’m able to tell you at the moment about any future evacuation plans after that. 

The foreign ministry did confirm to The Local that evacuation would be available for both Swedish citizens and non-Swedes living in Sweden with valid permits or right of residence. Both groups will need to show valid travel documents. You can call the foreign ministry’s crisis number +46 (0) 8 405 19 00 if you need to evacuate, but you have to make your own way to the airport.

The Local’s Richard Orange this week spoke to the immigration spokesperson for the far-right Sweden Democrats after the government launched an inquiry into tightening asylum rules to the strictest level allowable under EU law.

Asked whether some of the changes his party wants to make would actually be legal under Swedish, let alone EU, law, he said: “Of course it’s possible. Why would we waste time on it if it wasn’t possible? We have a lot of stuff to do. It would make zero sense to work on something if it wasn’t legally possible.”

How Swedish are you? There’s talk about tightening rules for would-be citizens, but are politicians looking at the truly important things? The Local’s Becky Waterton had some fun with an alternative take on a Swedish citizenship test. Here’s the quiz, which should now be working after some tech glitches! 

A man was this week found guilty of hate crimes after he, among other things, burned a copy of the Quran. But this doesn’t mean Quran burning is always illegal, and the court found that it’s the context that matters. Here’s why.

Despite inflation dropping, experts still believe the Riksbank central bank is likely to hike Sweden’s key interest rate at its next meeting in November. Which is fun news for those of us who have been trying to sell our house for months without any success. Not speaking on behalf of any editors in particular.

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend,

Emma Löfgren

Editor, The Local Sweden

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

Member comments

  1. Can you not just call them the “Sweden Democrats” and not the “far right Sweden democrats”.
    The labelling exposes you as biased. They are the “Sweden Democrats”. Period. The far right is a label added by the media. Cut it out. You will have a better newspaper for it.

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

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.

SHOW COMMENTS