Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

POLITICS

KEY POINTS: Everything you need to know about Sweden’s new government

Which political heavyweights were given positions in the new government? How many ministers are there from each party? Which ministries has Ulf Kristersson scrapped?

Published: 18 October 2022 15:50 CEST
Updated: 23 October 2022 08:22 CEST
KEY POINTS: Everything you need to know about Sweden’s new government
Sweden's new government. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT

Who are the new ministers in Kristersson’s cabinet?

Kristersson’s new cabinet features ministers from three different parties – the Moderates, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats. The fourth party in the right-wing coalition, the far-right nationalist Sweden Democrats, do not have ministers in the government despite being the largest party in their bloc, but will still have substantial influence over the new government’s policy.

Considering this new government is a complete change of power from the left-wing Social Democrats to a right-wing coalition government, every minister post has changed, as well as some ministries. Below is a rundown of the most notable appointments, you can see a full list of all the ministers appointed here.

Facts and figures

In terms of the share of ministers, the largest party in the government is the Moderates, with 12 ministers. The two smaller government parties, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, each received roughly the same number of ministers: 6 for the Christian Democrats and 5 for the Liberals.

Of the 23 ministers in the new cabinet, just under half (11) are female. This is similar to the outgoing Social Democrat government, where 11 of 22 ministers were female.

Who are the Moderate ministers?

First off, we’ve got the heavyweight roles. Sweden’s new Finance Minister is Elisabeth Svantesson. She is the Moderate financial spokesperson, and she repeatedly appeared alongside Kristersson during the election campaign to discuss policy proposals such as high-cost protection for energy bills.

The new Justice Minister is also a high-up Moderate: Gunnar Strömmer, Moderate Party Secretary. Strömmer has previously worked as a lawyer, and is also the founder of legal charity Centrum för rättvisa, which stands up for individual rights and freedoms, who are notably deeply critical of the new government’s policy proposals.

The Defence Minister is Pål Jonson, who will also head up the Defence Department, where he will be joined by Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oscar Bohlin. Jonson is a trained political scientist with a doctoral degree in the science of war. He has been the General Secretary of the Swedish Atlantic Committee and has also worked at the Swedish Defence Research Agency. He has been political spokesperson for the Moderates since 2019.

Sweden’s new Foreign Minister is Tobias Billström, who has been a Moderate Party spokesperson since 2002 and has previously been the party’s spokesperson on migration and integration issues. He was Migration Minister in the last Moderate government under Fredrik Reinfeldt between 2006 and 2014, where he worked to increase labour migration to Sweden and spoke out in favour of a common European asylum and migration policy. He is also leader of the Moderate’s parliamentary group.

The Migration Minister is Maria Malmer Stenergard, also a Moderate, who has been Moderate Party migration spokesperson since 2019. She is a trained lawyer and has called for “tightened up and long-term sustainable migration policy” where integration is a key aspect. She has called for a pause on accepting quota refugees, wants to make it easier for foreign doctoral students to stay in Sweden, and criticised the previous Social Democrat government for not doing enough to combat so-called ‘talent deportations’.

The other Moderate ministers in the next government are EU Minister Jessica Roswall, Foreign Aid Minister Johan Forsell, Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oscar Bohlin, Social Services Minister Kamilla Waltersson-Grönwall, Minister for the Elderly and Social Insurance Anna Tenje, Financial Market Minister Niklas Dykman and Culture Minister Parisa Liljestrand.

What about the smaller parties?

The most interesting appointments here include Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch’s new role as the Energy and Business Minister, as well as Deputy Prime Minister, and Liberal Leader Johan Pehrson taking over as Sweden’s next Labour Market and Integration Minister (so you’ll no doubt be hearing a lot about him at The Local over the next four years).

Johan Pehrson was tipped to become Education Minister, but that role has instead gone to Mats Persson, the Liberal Party’s financial spokesperson. The Liberals also supplied the Equality Minister (Paulina Brandberg), the Schools Minister (Lotta Edholm) and the Climate Minister, Romina Pourmokhtari, who at 26 is Sweden’s youngest-ever minister.

Aside from leader Ebba Busch, the other Christian Democrat ministers in the government are Peter Kullgren as Rural Affairs Minister, Andreas Carlson as Infrastructure and Housing Minister, Jakob Forssmed as Minister for Social Affairs, Acko Ankarberg as Health Minister and Erik Slottner as Minister for Public Administration.

Have any departments changed?

Yes. The Ministry for the Environment has been merged with the Ministry for Business, creating the new Ministry for Climate and Business, which is headed by Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch. This means that instead of heading up the Ministry for the Environment, Climate Minister Romina Pourmokhtari will be working underneath Busch in the Climate and Business Ministry on environment issues.

The Ministry for Enterprise and Innovation has also been scrapped.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

WORK PERMITS

Sweden’s Migration Agency rejects role in work permit salary threshold exemption plan

Sweden's Migration Agency has rejected a call for it to be responsible for drawing up a list of in-demand skills and professions exempted from the coming median-salary requirement for a work permit.

Published: 25 June 2024 12:02 CEST
Sweden's Migration Agency rejects role in work permit salary threshold exemption plan

In the conclusions to a government inquiry into setting the median salary threshold, judge Ann-Jeanette Eriksson proposed that the Migration Agency be made responsible for drawing up annual national and regional lists of professions which should be exempted from the threshold.

The list of proposed exemptions could then, she recommended, either be passed to the government for a final decision, or else apply immediately. 

In its response to consultation, the Migration Agency said that it did not believe that it was the right agency to draw up the list. 

“The Migration Agency considers that the task of preparing these proposals should be given to the Swedish Public Employment Service which is the expert agency on labour market issues,” the agency said. 

“As the expert agency, the Swedish Public Employment Service has much broader competence when it comes to judging the demand for labour.”

The employment service could then consult the Migration Agency and other relevant agencies before passing the list to the government, it recommended. 

READ ALSO:

The Swedish Public Employment Service did not echo the Migration Agency’s call in its own response. 

It did, however, recommend an alternative system proposed by Eriksson, under which the Migration Agency, rather than the government, would have the final say on which jobs should be exempted. 

“The alternative proposal would mean a simpler process and shorter handling time”, the service said. 

The Migration Agency, however, said it did not support this alternative proposal, without giving any reasons for this.

It did call for a consideration over “whether it might be necessary to consult with other authorities before the proposals are made to the government”.

The agency also called for more specific language on what “considerations around migration law” it should apply when deciding on which professions to exempt. 

In some of its comments on the detail or proposals, the Migration Agency highlighted that the law should specify that work permit applicants need to be offered a salary that meets or exceeds Sweden’s median salary “at the time of application”, and also called for more specifics on how to define a “monthly salary”.

  • Don’t miss any Swedish work permit news from The Local by downloading our app (available on Apple and Android) and then selecting Work Permits in your Notification options via the User button

Eriksson also recommended that Migration Agency be tasked with deciding which industries should be entirely excluded from the work permit system because they have historically had problems with the exploitation of labour migrants and abuse of the work permit system.  

“The possibility of excluding certain groups of jobs is an important tool in the work against exploitation in the workplace,” the agency said of this proposal.

But it said that to carry out this task properly, it would need more information on what criteria should be applied when making such exclusions as well as increased powers to cooperate and share information with other agencies involved in combatting exploitation and abuse in the workplace. 

“For this work to be even more effective, more tools are needed that enable more thorough controls. This is both about developing regulations that provide the Migration Agency with wider powers to carry out checks that facilitate cooperation and information exchange between relevant authorities and organisations,” it said. 

When it comes to the impact of the proposals on its own internal workings, the agency said it agreed broadly with the Eriksson’s judgement that they would not increase the workload at the agency.

The extra work required to carry out its new tasks would, it said, be largely offset by the lower work load following from the proposed abolition of the spårbyte, or “track change” system which allows rejected asylum seekers to stay in the country and apply for work permits. 

It did warn, however, that the changes could lead to even longer processing times for work permit applications. 

“The Migration Agency would like to highlight that the proposed changes to the law, and in particular the salary threshold and the regional and national exemptions from this threshold might affect handling times for work permit cases,” it wrote. 

“The regulatory framework around labour migration is already complex today and involves several decision points. Judging whether an application concerns a job for which there is a national or regional shortage will require a new decision point which will require education and preparation.” 

To reduce the extra demand on resources, the agency called on the government to make the regulation “as precise as possible”, leaving as little room as possible for different interpretations, which would then allow the agency to speed up processing and even digitalise some decisions. 

If the plans to raise the work permit salary threshold from 80 percent of the median salary to 100 percent go through, the idea is that they would come into effect in June next year (although work permit holders renewing their permits would get a one-year grace period).

But the proposal has received a slew of criticism from Swedish business organisations, which argue that it would make it harder to fill essential roles and attract international talent.

SHOW COMMENTS