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INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Friendship, work permit threshold and healthcare strike

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

Published: 27 April 2024 09:37 CEST
two women talking to each other at an outdoor table on a summer evening
How did you meet your friends in Sweden? Photo: Maskot/Folio/Imagebank.sweden.se

When a survey by national number-crunchers Statistics Sweden this week showed that 13 percent of foreigners don’t have a close friend, double the proportion of native Swedes who said the same thing, it got me thinking about what counts as a “close friend” anyway.

Are they our childhood friends whom we leave behind when we move countries? The ones who knew us through our childhood, our awkward teenage years and wild university days, who know all our past positives and negatives inside out, but not much about our day-to-day life?

Are they our new casual friends, who maybe aren’t yet our first call when we’re feeling down, but who know what we think about Swedish politics, what our favourite bar is, what music we like, but not anything about who we used to be (and that can also be a good thing)?

What do you think?

We’ve written many times before on The Local about how difficult a lot of foreigners find it to find friends in Sweden and this time we wanted to look at the issue from a more constructive and hopeful viewpoint, so we asked readers to tell us how they met their friends in Sweden.

I enjoyed reading all of their responses and was struck again by how these articles based on reader surveys are some of my favourite articles to write. I’m always very grateful for the fact that so many of our readers are so generous with their time, stories and insights. 

Here’s the article if you haven’t yet read it, and keep reading for more of what we’ve covered this week.

In other news

Sweden’s main business group this week attacked a proposal to exempt some jobs from a new minimum salary for work permits (as well as the bid to raise the threshold), calling it “unacceptable” political interference in the labour model which risks hurting national competitiveness.

A nationwide overtime ban involving tens of thousands of Swedish nurses and midwives got under way on Thursday afternoon, after negotiations about salaries and rotas broke down. Strikes are rare in Sweden, but what should you do if your union asks you to strike?

Planning a train trip in Sweden this summer but don’t know where to start? Try our top picks for railway travel across Sweden.

Sweden is one of many European countries struggling with brain waste, a situation where immigrants struggle to find suitable full-time work or are overqualified for their roles due to their education not being recognised. So how many immigrants in Sweden are overqualified?

Speaking of brain waste, a new analysis by Sweden’s main business group found that 51 percent of the labour migrants likely to be blocked by the new higher salary threshold I mentioned above will be graduates – not low-skilled workers as the government has claimed. The Local interviewed Karin Johansson, deputy director-general of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, about what this means for businesses.

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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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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