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Sweden’s new prime minister resigns after government falls

Just hours after her election, Sweden's incoming Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson handed in her resignation after a tense budget vote threw the government into crisis.

Published: 24 November 2021 17:03 CET
Updated: 24 November 2021 18:31 CET
Sweden's new prime minister resigns after government falls
Incoming and outgoing Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Wednesday afternoon. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

LATEST: Magdalena Andersson gets second shot at becoming prime minister

Her decision to step down followed a turbulent series of events that saw her budget fail to pass through parliament before the junior Greens Party announced it was leaving the coalition government. 

“There is a constitutional practice that a coalition government should resign when one party quits,” Andersson, a Social Democrat, told reporters.

“I don’t want to lead a government whose legitimacy will be questioned.”

Andersson said she hoped to be elected to the position again soon as the head of a minority government made up of only the Social Democrats.

Wednesday’s crisis began when the Centre Party withdrew its support for Andersson’s budget, due to the concessions made to the Left. That meant the new PM’s budget didn’t have enough votes to pass in parliament.

Lawmakers instead adopted an alternative budget presented by the opposition conservative Moderates, Christian Democrats and far-right Sweden Democrats.

The right-wing’s opposition budget – negotiated jointly by the conservative Moderates and Christian Democrats, and the Sweden Democrats – had won with 154 votes to 143.

The  fatal blow came when Greens leader Per Bolund said his party could not tolerate the opposition’s “historic budget, drafted for the first time with the far-right”, and quit the government.

The Greens slammed the approved budget, describing it as “differentiating between people, butchering the environmental budget, and increasing emissions”, referring to the new budget’s lowered petrol and diesel tax – a reduction of 50 öre per litre from May 1st 2022.

Bolund stated at a press conference that it is “not the Green Party’s goal to carry out a budget negotiated by the Sweden Democrats,” and that they “cannot sit in a government on a budget negotiated by the Sweden Democrats”.

KEY POINTS: What you need to know about Sweden’s new budget

Green Party spokespersons Per Bolund and Märta Stenevi. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

Andersson had been set to formally assume her duties on Friday after a meeting with King Carl XVI Gustaf, after being approved by parliament in a separate vote on Wednesday morning.

Speaker of parliament Andreas Norlen said he had accepted Andersson’s resignation and would contact party leaders before deciding Thursday how to proceed.

The exact steps of what will happen next are not entirely clear. 

The Green Party did say that it would support Magdalena Andersson in another prime minister vote if it comes to that. This may mean that Andersson will eventually become prime minister anyway, if none of the party’s change their stance on supporting her bid.

The rules for a budget vote and a prime minister vote differ slightly in Sweden. In a budget vote, the proposal with the most yes votes wins. In a prime minister vote, the candidate wins as long as a majority does not vote against them.

This means that Andersson will need no more from the Centre Party than its abstentions in a second prime minister vote – this would be enough to make her PM, provided the Left Party and the Green Party also abstain or vote in her favour, which they likely will.

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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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