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SWEDEN ELECTS

Sweden Elects: What’s in store for the Swedish economy in 2023?

In our weekly Sweden Elects newsletter, The Local's editor Emma Löfgren explains the key events to keep an eye on in Swedish politics this week.

Published: 19 December 2022 09:06 CET
money
The cost of living is going up in Sweden. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

Hej,

With only two weeks left to go until the end of the year (and with that my return to full-time work as editor of The Local, after working only on this newletter during my maternity leave), let’s take a look at what the new year may have in store for the Swedish economy. I say “may” to hedge my bets, but also because things truly do look uncertain at the moment.

Before any of us panic, one thing to bear in mind is that the Swedish economy is at its core fairly solid and not prone to big fluctuations.

With that said, big fluctuations alert!

“Hold on tight, Sweden’s housing bubble has burst,” writes David Crouch in a new opinion piece about the plummeting house prices. Many banks as well as the central bank estimate they will fall by around 20 percent.

Even those who aren’t planning on selling their house or apartment any time soon will have to tighten their belts in the coming year.

The interest on mortgages is likely going to keep increasing for the time being. Those who have a fixed interest rate for the next couple of years are in luck, but those who haven’t should expect their costs to go up. Here are The Local’s top tips for getting the best rate on your mortgage.

And then there’s fuel and energy. Car owners had better consider whether or not they can manage with public transport instead. Home owners should save up money this winter so that they can pay those hefty bills to heat their homes – and think about how to reduce their use of electricity.

The downturn doesn’t only affect home owners. A lot of companies for rented apartments are hiking their rents to compensate for the record cost of energy (which is often included in the rent). In western and central Sweden, for example, the umbrella organisation for landlords wants to increase rents by 10 percent (compared to a 1.4 percent average increase last year), although this is being fought by the tenants’ association.

The unemployment rate, however, is less likely to be radically affected by the downturn, since it comes amid a historic demand for skilled labour, particularly in health and social care, according to job market analysts.

If you’ve got some free time today, I recommend listening to the latest episode of The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast, in which my colleagues discuss the rising cost of living as well as migration agency delays, far-right meddling, and Swedish Christmas traditions.

In other news

A new report from Sweden’s Parliamentary Ombudsman has found that a number of cases at Sweden’s Migration Agency were “not actively processed for the majority of the processing time”, despite waits of more than three years. Here’s what we’ve learned from the report.

Sweden’s government has said it wants to develop a cultural canon to forge a greater sense of community, but the idea has met with opposition from arts sector representatives who worry that the long-held principle of keeping culture at arm’s length from politicians is under threat.

The government, joined at a press conference by the far-right Sweden Democrats, has also ordered the Migration Agency to withdraw more work and residence permits obtained on false premises, calling on it to appoint specialists, and develop automatic processes to identify abuses.

Sweden’s front pages have been filled this month with stories about corruption and stalking allegations against one of the country’s most senior police officers. This article explains the gist of it, but the story could become a headache for both the police authority and the government.

National police chief Anders Thornberg has appointed an inquiry to get to the bottom of what happened, but he has also been criticised for not acting resolutely enough when the allegations first came to his attention.

“What’s Strömmer waiting for? Replace the management of the police,” an editorial in the liberal-independent tabloid Expressen puts to Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer, who insists he still has faith in Thornberg.

Strömmer, being relatively newly-elected, of course wasn’t involved when the alleged events unfolded (and presumably neither was the then-government, since this appears to be an internal police matter), but when criticism pours down on an agency, a few drops of rain often also fall on the minister in charge as we’ve learned in the past, who in this case is Strömmer.

Strömmer now has a fine balancing act ahead of him, where he must not appear to meddle where he shouldn’t (the heads of government agencies are appointed by ministers in Sweden, but ministers are not supposed to interfere in their daily work), nor seem like he is shirking from responsibility.

Christmas is coming up, so I also want to wish you a god jul!

As always, thanks for reading.

Best wishes,

Emma

Sweden Elects is a weekly column by Editor Emma Löfgren looking at the big talking points and issues after the Swedish election. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive the column as a newsletter in their email inbox each week. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.

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For members

INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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