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Sweden’s winning right-bloc agrees to form government with far-right backing

Three Swedish right-wing parties have agreed to form a minority government with the unprecedented support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, immediately announcing plans to crack down on crime and immigration and build new nuclear power stations.

Sweden's winning right-bloc agrees to form government with far-right backing
Sweden Democrats Jimmie Akesson, Leader of the Moderate party Ulf Kristersson, Leader of the Christian Democrats Ebba Busch and Leader of the Liberal party Johan Pehrson address a press conference on the formation of a coalition government at the Parliament press office in Stockholm. Photo: Jonathan Nackstränd/ AFP

The incoming government will be made up of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals, with the far-right Sweden Democrats remaining outside the coalition but providing key support in parliament.

The four presented a roadmap Friday for their cooperation, outlining measures to address rising crime, immigration, energy policy, healthcare, education and the economy.

“Change is not just necessary, but possible, and the four of us can deliver that”, conservative Moderates leader Ulf Kristesson told reporters.

Parliament will vote on Kristersson as the new prime minister on Monday and the future government is expected to take office on Tuesday, just over a month after the right-wing won a narrow victory in a general election that ousted the Social Democrats after eight years in power.

The four right-wing parties together hold 176 of 349 seats in parliament. The anti-immigration and nationalist Sweden Democrats, once shunned as pariahs on Sweden’s political scene, were the big winners of the September 11 vote.

They emerged as the country’s second-largest party with a record 20.5 percent of votes, behind outgoing prime minister Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats, which have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s.

KEY POINTS: What do we know about Sweden’s new government coalition deal?

Swedish Politics: Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson wins backing to be next PM

While far-right leader Jimmie Åkesson said he “would have preferred to sit in government”, he stressed that most important was that his party, as the biggest right-wing party, have influence over policy.

“We are going to deliver policy, especially in those areas our voters think are extra important, and crime policy is one such area”, he told reporters.

While the quartet presented a united front on Friday, they have traditionally been divided on a number of key policy areas and major concessions were made in the agreement, primarily to meet the far-right’s demands.

Sweden has struggled to contain soaring gang shootings and violence, and the roadmap calls for an introduction of visitation zones in some disadvantaged areas, harsher sentences for repeat offenders, double sentences for certain crimes and anonymous witnesses — all major concessions by the small Liberal party.

The incoming government also plans to make major cuts in Sweden’s generous refugee policy, reducing the number of quota refugees from 6,400 last year to 900 per year during its four-year mandate.

It will also ditch Sweden’s development aid target of one percent of gross national income and introduce a national ban on begging.

The four parties also agreed to not reduce unemployment benefits, a major concession to the far-right by the Moderates.

“What has been most important to the Sweden Democrats is that the change of government represent a paradigm shift”, Åkesson said.

Meanwhile, the future government also announced plans to build new nuclear reactors to meet the country’s rising electricity needs.

“New nuclear reactors will be built”, the leader of the Christian Democrats Ebba Busch told reporters. “We are going to meet our end of the Paris Agreement, but without destroying companies’ and Swedish households’ finances. The goal going forward is electrification and the way there is nuclear power”, she said.

The Scandinavian country voted in a 1980 non-binding referendum to phase out nuclear power.

The country has in recent years shut down six of its 12 reactors and the remaining ones, at three nuclear power plants, generate about 30 percent of the electricity used in the country today.

But it has struggled to find viable alternative energy sources to replace nuclear power, with renewable energies not yet able to fully meet its needs.

The outgoing Social Democratic government, in power for the past eight years, has traditionally been opposed to the construction of new reactors but acknowledged earlier this year that nuclear energy would be crucial for the foreseeable future.

Swedish energy group Vattenfall said therefore in June it was examining the possibility of building at least two small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

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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.

'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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