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POLITICS

‘Very little debate’ on consequences of Sweden’s crime and migration clampdown

Sweden’s political leaders are putting the population’s well-being at risk by moving the country in a more authoritarian direction, according to a recent report.

Published: 29 April 2024 08:56 CEST
Gunnar Strömmer
Justice minister Gunnar Strömmer attends a press conference in February 2024 to announce Sweden's first national strategy to combat organised crime. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast. 

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

Member comments

  1. I may be wrong but I feel that the local is turning into a leftist media. There are subtle highlights against SD for example. I have never seen articles against S or other left leaning parties. Don’t go there, you will loose subscribers.

    1. Hej, thank you for your comment. We regularly cover topics that affect immigrants as most of our readers have moved to Sweden from other countries. If parties’ migration policies make it harder for our readers to move to, work and live in Sweden, we will not shy away from criticising them, regardless of which party is behind them. That said, we are not a party political publication. The independent report cited in this article looks at the human rights performance of governments across the EU and does not have any party political affiliations. Hope that explains our thinking.

  2. What do you expect when Swedes elect a far-right government? Of course civil liberties are regressing. Sweden is slowly but surely losing the charm that made it a special place. The longer these right-wing nutters are in power, the worse it will get.

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POLITICS

EXPLAINED: How radically does a new report aim to change Sweden’s public broadcasters?

Sweden's four-party government bloc have 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?

Published: 14 May 2024 16:04 CEST
EXPLAINED: How radically does a new report aim to change Sweden's public broadcasters?

What is the Public Service inquiry? 

On the face of it, there is nothing particularly alarming about a parliamentary inquiry into the regulation and funding of Sweden’s three public service broadcasters: television broadcaster SVT, radio broadcaster SR, and UR, which provides educational programming. 

The committee, which included members from each party in parliament, was instructed to decide how the three broadcasters should be regulated between 2026 and 2033, its next remit period, and to make proposals which “create good conditions for public service organisations to maintain and protect their independence”. 

Similar parliamentary inquiries provided their conclusions in 2012, under the centre-right Alliance government, and in 2016 under the centre-left Social Democrat-Green Party government.

In his report, the inquiry’s chair, former Christian Democrat leader Göran Hägglund, said the committee supported the idea that the public broadcasters should still have a broad remit, and also that their independence should continue to be protected.

So why the controversy? 

The opposition parties are complaining that the committee, which started off working with cross-party consensus as its goal, had changed character at the last moment, with the three government parties and the far-right Sweden Democrats (together known as the Tidö parties after the palace where their collaboration started) suddenly pushing for the inclusion of previously undiscussed and radical changes. 

“Very late in the work on the inquiry, major differences have arisen as a consequence of the Tidö parties’ internal negotiations, which explains the many reservations and the alternative proposal for allocation of funds that our parties propose,” the committee members for the Social Democrats, Green Party, Centre Party, and Left Party, said in an opinion piece published in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.  

“We regret that the committee has not been able to unite behind the conclusions. At a late stage the Tidö parties chose to do their own thing, which is unusual. There has been a clear reluctance to look more widely for a solution,” the Social Democrats’ culture spokesperson, Lawen Redar, said at a press meeting.  

Perhaps the most controversial of the changes include: 

  • Stripping out a clause that requires the three broadcasters to ensure programmes reflect “equality” and “diversity”
  • Changing future funding so that the broadcasters get funding increased by just one percent annually between 2031-2033 
  • Proposing a new inquiry into fusing the three broadcasters into a single national broadcaster 
  • Pushing public service broadcasters to focus more on TV and radio, and less on the internet or social media

Is this a demolition of public service broadcasters? 

Well, not really. 

Sweden’s public service broadcasters have traditionally received an annual increase in funding of about 2 percent – in line with Sweden’s inflation target. This meant for a decade from 2010 until 2021, it saw a real rise in funding, but meant the broadcasters were hit hard by the inflation of over 8 percent in 2022 and nearly 6 percent in 2023, with many making layoffs. 

The inquiry recommends increasing funding, which was a combined 9.1 billion kronor in 2024, by 3 percent in 2026, 2 percent between 2027 and 2030 and one percent between 2031 and 2033.

Cilla Benkö, the chief executive of SR, said that the funding reduction represented “a gradual downgrading” of SR, which would mean “fewer journalists and fewer programmes”, especially after the organisation had just carried out a series of layoffs. 

“For eight years, we’re going to be short of 2 billion kronor, and we need to upgrade our property. We own Radiohuset in Stockholm, which is from the 60s, and we don’t have the money to do it. If we don’t get it, we will have to take money from journalism, which will affect the public and also affect civil defence.” 

In their reservation from the report’s conclusions, the Social Democrats wrote that they believed that the government’s decision to reduce funding was “ideologically motivated”. 

Is stripping out “equality” and “diversity” from programme goals a political move? 

In the report, Hägglund made out that removing jämställdhet, meaning equality, and mångfald, meaning diversity, from the description of what the three broadcasters’ programmes should reflect was simply because they were redundant.

Broadcasters, he argued, are already required to do this under the Public Service Act. 

But it’s clear that even if it might not have a large impact on the broadcaster’s output in practice, this fits in with the ideology of the far-right Sweden Democrats, for whom “diversity” and “ethnic diversity” in particular are not a fundamental part of “democratic principles”, as they have been seen within Sweden’s public broadcasters. 

Whether this will have real impact or just be something the Sweden Democrats can use to impress their voters remains to be seen. 

What about the inquiry into combining Sweden’s three broadcasters into a single entity? 

When he presented the inquiry Hägglund said that Sweden was “strange” in having separate national broadcasters for TV, radio and eduction. 

“We know that Sweden is strange in this respect. Nearly all counties have a single combined company,” he said at the press conference. 

The committee has proposed that the government launch an inquiry into combining the three companies into a single entity, a proposal that the members for the Social Democrats, Centre Party, Green Party and Left Party did not support.  

The wastefulness of running three separate public broadcasters is a longstanding criticism of Sweden’s system, however. 

Websites should only be “complementary” to TV and radio, and changes to social media guidelines

The inquiry held back from calling for the three public broadcasters to reduce or limit the amount of content they publish on their websites, but said that text media should be only “complementary” to their core TV and radio output.

The inquiry also said that the demand that broadcasters be “non-partisan” and “factual”, should also cover what they publish on social media, with all publications, including those on social media open for examination by Sweden’s broadcasting regulator. 

Finally, the inquiry said that the broadcasters’ own platforms should be their “priority distribution channels” on the internet, and that use of social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat should follow “an assessment of the risks and the potential consequences”. 

So what happens now?

The inquiry is now being sent out for consultation, after which it is likely to return to the parliament’s culture committee before a new bill is drafted and sent to parliament for a vote. 

The four centre-left parties who objected to many of the report’s conclusions have said they will continue working to get their positions into the final bill. However, as they don’t hold a majority in parliament, their leverage could be limited.

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