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POLITICS

Here’s what Sweden talked about ahead of the EU elections

With the EU elections taking place on Sunday in Sweden, what are the key talking points? The Local takes a look at the stories and issues dominating the Swedish election campaign.

Published: 24 May 2019 11:24 CEST
Updated: 26 May 2019 23:42 CEST
Here's what Sweden talked about ahead of the EU elections
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, centre, on the campaign bus. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

A groping scandal

The top candidate for the far-right Sweden Democrats has faced accusations of groping a party colleague. Another senior candidate, Kristina Winberg, was ousted after speaking to media about the groping.

The party announced on Sunday that MEP Kristina Winberg had been crossed off the party's ballot for the European election for “conspiring to smear party colleagues, with the help of the media”. 

Swedish tabloid Expressen said that its reporter had confronted the Sweden Democrats' top candidate Peter Lundgren a day earlier with allegations he had touched a female colleague's breasts. The woman in question and Winberg discussed the alleged incident in two taped phone conversations, Expressen reported.

Peter Lundgren first denied the allegations, but then told the newspaper: “I probably touched her breasts when we were sitting there, we were pretty drunk that night, and she pushed my hands away. I know that I put my hand on her breast but not with the intention that anything would happen. Not at all.”

READ ALSO: Who are the Swedish parties and what do they want?


Peter Lundgren is pictured being interviewed earlier this week. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

Lundgren has been reported to the police and a preliminary investigation has been opened into sexual harassment, but remains the Sweden Democrats' top candidate.

Meanwhile, he has reported Winberg for slander, and the Sweden Democrats released a video of Lundgren and the woman he groped.

In the video, Lundgren says he was “a dumbo” and the woman describes the party at which the incident took place as fun and that “it's unfortunate that it became as stupid as it did”.

The right to abortion

Women's right to safe, legal abortion has become a key question in the election campaign.

Christian Democrat Lars Adaktusson, the party's spokesperson on foreign policy and a sitting MEP, was revealed by Dagens Nyheter to have voted against the right to abortion 22 times in the European Parliament. He voted in favour four times, and abstained twice.

In the same votes, MEPs from Sweden's other parties voted in favour except the Sweden Democrats, who abstained in 12 votes, voted in favour in 12, and against in one vote.


From left, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch Thor with the party's deputy spokesperson Jakob Forssmed and Adaktusson. Photo:  Pavel Koubek/TT

The Social Democrats, Centre and Liberal Parties have spoken out against Adaktusson's decision, with Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader Stefan Löfven saying the politician should not be allowed to remain in Christian Democrat leadership. The party's official line is that it supports Swedish abortion law but that it wants to work to reduce the number of abortions and unplanned pregnancies.

In Sweden, women have the right to abortion for any reason within the first 18 weeks of pregnancy, but elsewhere in the EU, the procedure is in practice hard to access – for example in Italy where the vast majority of doctors refuse to carry it out – or outlawed completely, as in Northern Ireland where the procedure is illegal in almost every circumstance.

LONG READ: How Sweden got some of the most liberal abortion laws in the world

Threats against politicians

Politicians' safety and the need to protect democracy has also been a talking point during this campaign.

Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson was the victim of a suspected attack on Thursday, when an unknown person threw a banger at the politician's car as he and his security guards left a meeting in Mariestad, near Stockholm. 


Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson speaking to media. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven called the incident “an attack on our democracy” as he expressed sympathy to Åkesson and his family.

And on Friday, a second banger was thrown close to Åkesson as he continued on the campaign trail in Tranås, central-southern Sweden.

It came one week after an attack on a 15-year-old who was working as a canvasser at a Sweden Democrat election cabin in central Borås. An unknown person threw a coca cola drink over the teenager and ran away, Borås Tidning reported, and when the 15-year-old later spotted the perpetrator and took a photo on his phone, he was reportedly assaulted by several people.

Climate issues and alternatives to flying

As in the general election in September, climate issues are once again one of the highest priorities for voters.

Sweden's Green Party are to campaign for half the European Union's long-term budget to go towards climate investments and initiatives, as part of the “Green New Deal” agreed with other European green parties.

The Centre Party have also made climate issues a central part of their campaign, focusing on several ideas to make air travel more climate friendly, for example by emissions trading.

… but nothing about Swexit

Sweden's two most eurosceptic parties, the Left Party and Sweden Democrats, both dropped their longstanding pledges for Sweden to leave the EU earlier in the year, meaning that none of the country's major parties is actively campaigning for an exit from the EU.

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

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.

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