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EU leaders head to Sweden to seek fairer post-Brexit economy

EU leaders are set to meet in Gothenburg this week to launch an offensive on the economic inequalities fuelling populism.

Published: 15 November 2017 15:09 CET

EU leaders head to Sweden to seek fairer post-Brexit economy

Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. Photo: Alexander Larsson Vierth/TT

Friday's summit in the port city of Gothenburg aims to restore faith in the post-war vision of a united Europe by promoting fair jobs, growth and a social safety net after years of crisis-driven economic austerity.

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said far-right gains in Austrian and German elections, which followed the shock of Britain's vote to leave the European Union, showed action was necessary.

“Rightwing extremists gaining power? Yes of course I'm worried because I know it's a poison for society,” Löfven, the summit's co-organizer, told AFP in an interview in Brussels last month.

“I'm convinced that a sustainable European Union needs a strong social dimension because this is all about people.”

The so-called “social summit” is the first of its kind since one in Luxembourg in 1997.

It aims to show that the EU is not just a huge market of 500 million people, but a force that can meet the concerns of working people by reducing inequality, boosting welfare and improve people's work-life balance in an era of ever increasing global competition.

Ambitious reforms

The meeting is also the first in an ambitious timeline of summits proposed by EU President Donald Tusk over the next two years to reboot the bloc after Brexit and other setbacks.

Former Polish premier Tusk unveiled the schedule of talks just weeks after calls for deep EU reform by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker.

Most of the EU's 28 national leaders are expected to attend, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, even though her country, which is due to leave the bloc in 2019, has long resisted greater government involvement in the job market.

May could take the chance to have meetings on the sidelines with other leaders about the deadlocked Brexit negotiations, with a December deadline looming for a deal to move on to trade talks.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the bloc's economic and political dynamo, will skip the summit to lead talks for a new governing coalition, though her aides said she fully supports the meeting's goals.

These points will be enshrined in a European Pillar of Social Rights which Juncker, European Parliament chief Antonio Tajani and Estonian Prime Minister Juria Ratas – whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency – are due to sign on Friday.

Extremism and populism

But there are, as ever, splits within the EU over how best to drive economic growth.

Löfven, Juncker and other EU leaders have called for free trade deals with Latin America and other parts of the world despite calls by Macron to moderate their zeal.

Macron argues that EU governments no longer have the popular support to negotiate trade deals as many Europeans fear they will lead only to more job losses as well as weaker environmental and health standards.

Löfven, who has headed a fragile Social Democrat coalition since 2014, said trade deals are needed for economic growth but that wealth must be distributed in a “fairer way than we do today”.

“If gaps are widening too much, especially if people at the bottom of the society feel that they are not part of this, well that breeds extremism and populism,” Löfven said.

Leaders are also due to discuss ways to make it easier for young Europeans to move for education and jobs, such as the Erasmus programme, which has allowed five million Europeans to study around the bloc since it was launched 30 years ago.

“Education and culture are the source of millions of jobs and growth in our Member States and tools to reduce inequalities,” Tusk wrote in an invitation letter.

Article by AFP's Lachlan Carmichael

British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

The QX gala – Sweden’s glitzy, televised celebration of gay culture – is not the first place a man in his 20s would go to find a future wife.

But that’s what happened to British actor Kenny Solomons.

Solomons, now 37, was already a well-known face in Sweden after playing the superhero in adverts for the internet provider Bredbandsbolaget. He was there to give out an award. Tess Merkel, singer for the nu-disco band Alcazar – one of Sweden’s most successful ever groups – was there to receive one.

“It was utterly insane,” Solomons remembers. “I had had a few drinks and then I woke up the next day in this typical Swedish apartment with kids’ toys everywhere. I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on?'”

“The kids were away with their dad, and Tess went off to work the next day and she left a note – as a joke – on the kitchen table that said ‘sorry I left you, but I took off to plan our wedding’. I thought it was a one-night stand. I was 25 years old and she was 17 years older. I didn’t expect to be married.”

The actor Kenny Solomons (right) arrives at the QX Gala in 2016. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

But in 2015 they got engaged and then in 2017, they married in the Indian holiday paradise of Goa, making it legal for Sweden with a ceremony in Stockholm City Hall the next year.

By then, Solomons was so deeply embedded in Stockholm’s celebrity whirl that everything from the Brexit referendum to the deadline for post-Brexit residency had more or less passed him by. It was only when he took a trip to Greece in the summer of 2022, his first international trip since the pandemic broke out, that he realised the mistake he had made.

“We flew back through Serbia, which is outside the European Union, so as we were coming in through the Swedish border, they said ‘hey, you do realise that you’re going to need to send in a whole load of information’, and I was completely shocked. I had no idea. I mean, to some people, I might sound like an absolute moron, but I just wasn’t aware of it.”

In some ways his ignorance was unsurprising, given the Swedish authorities’ decision not to contact British citizens directly, even digitally, to inform them of the need to apply for post-Brexit residency by the end of 2021, although there was information published online.

READ ALSO:

Why did Sweden reject Brits’ applications for post-Brexit residency?

Unlike many Brits in Sweden, Solomons was at that point completely integrated, living in the upmarket Stockholm district of Hammarby Sjöstad, and speaking almost exclusively Swedish.

“It wasn’t originally the plan to do everything in Swedish. It was after I started working and running a business here, that it just sort of kicked in,” he remembers. “After three or four years, I suddenly was like, ‘ah, OK, I’m speaking Swedish. My mother would be very proud, that me, a dyslexic boy from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, could speak even one word in another language!”

Because he only hung out with Swedes and rarely met other Brits, he had simply not heard about the Brexit deadline.

“All of my friends are in the industry. I socialise among those who also work as artists here in Sweden,” he explains. “When you work as an entrepreneur or an artist, there is nobody to give you that little nudge and say, ‘hey, there is a thing going on called Brexit and it’s going to affect your status here in Sweden’. I had absolutely no idea that it would affect me in this way, and would still be affecting me four years on.”

Looking back, he remembers spending much of 2020 and 2021 desperately trying and eventually failing to save his chain of barbershops and hair-replacement therapy centres from bankruptcy due to the pandemic.

READ ALSO:

Sweden tells EU that high number of Brexit rejections is ‘at the right level’

When he did apply for post-Brexit residency – nearly a year late – he was rejected as the Migration Agency does not treat ignorance as “reasonable grounds” for missing the deadline. He appealed the decision to the Migration Court, but this month decided he had had enough of waiting, given that rejection was “inevitable”.

“It’s now 19 months since I sent in my appeal to the Migration Court, and the pressure of not knowing, every day, and the pressure of having to say ‘no’ to career opportunities outside of Europe, and the pressure of not knowing with 100 percent certainty that I can live and work in Sweden in the long run was just affecting my health, and my mental health as well,” he says.

“I hit the wall, was suffering with anxiety, and was incredibly unhappy. So I made the decision.”

He’s now going to return to the UK and apply for spousal reunion with Merkel. As he has no young children of his own, there is little chance of getting granted the right to do this from within Sweden.

Since he left the UK as a young man, his mother has died, and his 60-year-old father has left their childhood home in Essex and moved to Chester on the other side of England, somewhere he has never been.

“I guess I’ll go and sleep on his couch,” he says. “I can moan and be upset and say all these awful things. But I have my health and I have a place to go. There are people in a similar situation that don’t have any connections or ties left in the UK any longer, so I’m very grateful to at least have a couch to crash on while I figure out this next step.”

His father got married in the middle of June, and Solomon’s plan is to return for the wedding party on August 24th, handing in his application for spousal reunion in Sweden within days of arrival. He has no idea if he will then have to wait six months, or two years, before he is granted the right to live again in Sweden.

“My wife and I, we really always try to make the best out of a bad situation, whatever it is, so when I leave Sweden and start my process from my dad’s I want to continue to be able to give back to this country.”

READ ALSO:

Brits in Sweden still in limbo years after Brexit deadline

His next plan is to return to India, where he spent several years before coming to Sweden working as an actor in Bollywood films.

“You’re gonna think I’m completely nuts. I want to fly to the most northern part of India and run from North India to South India, the whole way, and raise money for Läkare Utan Gränser [the Swedish arm of the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)].”

He says that one of the silver linings to his situation is that as someone involved in Swedish showbusiness, his case has received media coverage, unlike hundreds of other British citizens who have been victims of Sweden’s strict application of the EU Withdrawal Agreement.

“It’s a very, very great luxury and something I don’t take for granted that I have a platform that can be used for to spread my thoughts and my opinions,” he said, adding that he has also enjoyed sharing information with and trying to help other British people in the same situation.

Tess Merkel’s band Alcazar performed at the Eurovision Grand Final in Malmö in 2024. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Now he’s looking forward to returning back to the UK, where family and friends were in May blown away by the surprise appearance of Merkel and the rest of Alcazar at the Eurovision Grand Final.

“I had to keep it a secret from my family in England. I couldn’t tell anybody because Alcazar had written a contract with Eurovision,” he remembers. “So my family didn’t know, and they were just shocked when they came on. They Facetimed me just afterwards and said, ‘they really made fun of Alcazar. I felt really sorry for them’.”

But Alcazar, he said, had no issues with being made the butt of a joke about their ‘reunion’ not quite being the hoped-for Abba appearance. The are, he says, “a playful band”.

“She is that person in real life. She’s absolutely fantastic. She’s an absolute gem. She’s my best friend,” he said of Merkel. “She might say to you, ‘it will be quite nice to have a bit of a break from Kenny. He’s a pain in the ass’. But taking this step is like losing my right hand, because we are so co-dependent on each other – in all the best ways.”

Membership+ subscribers can listen to the full interview with Kenny Solomons in the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast, which will be available from Wednesday, June 26th.

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