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POLITICS IN SWEDEN

Politics in Sweden: This year’s EU election will be a white-knuckle ride for smaller parties

With as many as three of Sweden's parties at risk of being kicked out of the European parliament, the stakes in this year's European elections are higher perhaps than ever before.

Published: 6 May 2024 16:12 CEST
Politics in Sweden: This year's EU election will be a white-knuckle ride for smaller parties
The EU elections will take place across the bloc at the beginning of June. Photo: Erik Mårtensson/TT

According to the latest polling by Verian for Swedish public broadcaster SVT, one party – the Liberals – is already polling below the formal four percent threshold to enter the European Parliament, but two more, the Christian Democrats and the Centre Party, are worryingly close, with each polling at both 4.5 percent. 

If the poll is right, the Social Democrats are set to be the big winners in the election, gaining two additional seats, while the Left Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats are both in line to gain one additional seat.

The Centre Party, Christian Democrats, and Green Party are all set to lose one seat each, but as the three parties each currently have more than one seat, they will nonetheless keep their representation in parliament. 

Tommy Möller, a professor of politics at Stockholm University, told the TT newswire that the two parties likely to be the most worried ahead of election day on June 9th are the Liberals and the Centre Party. 

For the Liberals, it matters partly because it has long seen itself as Sweden's most pro-EU party. At its highpoint 15 years ago, it had three seats in the EU parliament, but it sank to just one in the 2020 European elections.

If the party were now to lose the last of its seats, the leadership of party chairman Johan Pehrson, Möller argued, would be put into question. 

"This could prompt an internal debate on party leadership," he told the TT newswire. "There's no doubt that if the Liberals, who (...) promote themselves as the most pro-EU party, lost their mandate, it would be a massive blow."  

He said he would also not rule out a leadership challenge against the Centre Party's leader Muharrem Demirok should his party lose both its seats in the EU parliament, given how badly he has struggled as leader to gain any visibility with voters.

"Obviously the Centre Party is fighting an uphill battle in the opinion polls. If it loses its seat, that would obviously add to the lack of confidence in the party leader, which could prompt an internal leadership debate," Möller said. 

For the Christian Democrats, the Verian poll is in some ways encouraging. Thus far the indications are that Folklistan, the party formed by the former Christian Democrat MEP Sara Skyttedal, is far below the 4 percent threshold, with only an estimated 1.5 percent of the vote.

While it is no doubt nibbling away at Christian Democrat support, it has so far not managed to drag the party down below the 4 percent threshold. 

Möller said he did not expect anyone to call for party leader Ebba Busch to stand down, almost regardless of the result.  

"I don't think there will be calls for her resignation, but obviously, the mandate you have as a leader is always linked to how well its going for the party in opinion polls and elections," he said.  

Return of the Greens?

Even though they are projected to lose one of their seats, if the Green Party succeeds in winning 9.5 percent of the vote on June 9th, as the polls suggest, it will still be seen as a decent result, showing that the party, which has been struggling in domestic politics, at least does well in the EU elections.

If the party retains its third seat, it will be seen as a resounding victory. 

According to a popularity poll by the Aftonbladet newspaper, the party's lead MEP, former leader Alice Bah Kuhnke, is both the second most popular politician standing in the election and the most unpopular, reflecting just how polarising the party has become in Sweden. 

In the poll, 30 percent of respondents said they had high or very high confidence in Bah Kuhnke, second only to the Left Party's candidate and former leader, Jonas Sjöstedt, on 42 percent. But at the same time, 64 percent of respondents said they had "low confidence" in her.  

According to Johan Martinsson, the head of opinion research at Demoskop, who carried out the poll, this should not worry the Greens too much.

"As long as the relevant group of voters have a large amount of confidence, it doesn't really make any difference if you are despised by those who oppose you. It can almost be a good thing as it makes it easier to get attention."

Could the election mark a turnaround for the party, which has voted in two new leaders this year? 

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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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