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TODAY IN SWEDEN

Today in Sweden: A roundup of the latest news on Friday

Torrential rain set to batter south-eastern Sweden on Friday, Gotland mayor proposes tourist tax for summer visitors, and a new ranking reveals the best – and worst – places to live in Sweden.

Published: 28 June 2024 06:49 CEST
people in Malmö on the hottest day of the year
Sweden's hottest day of the year is expected to be replaced by torrential rain. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

Torrential rain set to batter south-eastern Sweden on Friday

After sunshine comes rain.

Sweden’s heatwave had barely ended when weather agency SMHI warned of a downpour set to batter the south-east.

The yellow warning covers an area including cities such as Stockholm, Västerås, Örebro, Norrköping, Växjö, Kalmar and Karlskrona.

“A front brings heavy rain or thundershowers during Friday, locally hail may also occur. 30-60 millimetres of rain can fall in a short time. The heaviest showers look set to come during the afternoon and evening,” said SMHI in an update on its website.

There’s a risk of flooded basements, stormwater systems, roads and viaducts.

Swedish vocabulary: a downpour – ett skyfall

Top candidates abandon failed Swedish party Folklistan

Folklistan, a new party started up by ousted Christian Democrat MEP Sara Skyttedal and former Social Democrat MP Jan Emanuel this spring, with the aim of grabbing a spot in the European Parliament, received just 0.6 percent of votes in the May election. 

Emanuel is now leaving the party and hopes to rejoin the Social Democrats.

“I tried to change things and it went straight to hell,” he said, speaking on newspaper Expressen’s stage at Sweden’s annual political festival, Almedalen Week. “I thought that if we in these two months would manage to get our message out, we could have made it, but because the response was so weak we failed.”

Skyttedal also told Swedish media that she was also leaving Folklistan, but didn’t have any concrete future plans yet.

Folklistan’s press officer, Tim Sundblad, however, told the TT newswire that it will continue to operate. 

According to TT, former Sweden Democrat and MEP Johan Nissinen is expected to be the new top name of the party.

Swedish vocabulary: straight to hell – the words Emanuel used were det gick åt pipsvängen. Pipsvängen is a word made famous by Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia the Robber’s Daughter and isn’t easily translated (in fact the English translation of the book usually avoids translating it), but it’s a euphemism for “hell” and could be translated as something going straight to hell, or perhaps going to the dogs.

Gotland mayor proposes tourist tax for summer visitors

Imposing extra taxes on tourists is not allowed in Sweden, unlike tourism hot spots such as for example Venice, Italy.

The regional mayor of Gotland, Meit Fohlin, wants to change that, reports public radio broadcaster SR Ekot.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the Baltic Sea island every summer, a beautiful and popular destination. Many mainlanders own a second home and stay there for months, using the island’s resources while their tax money ends up in their home municipalities.

“It’s important that tourism continues to be an important industry, and local industries then need contributions,” said Fohlin.

She said it should be possible to “pay tax for those months that goes to Gotland or where you own a summer house. Other places do that and it would be a fairly straightforward solution”.

Swedish vocabulary: a tourist tax – en turistskatt

Is Umeå the best place to live in Sweden?

Umeå in northern Sweden is the best place to live in Sweden, at least if a new ranking by the magazine Fokus is to be believed. 

The research was carried out by Infostat on behalf of Fokus and looked at factors such as household economy, safety, jobs, education, childcare, healthcare, infrastructure, services, leisure and public economy.

“This is of course great. All of northern Sweden and not least Umeå is on fire right now and offer residents extremely good opportunities to live good lives,” Umeå mayor Hans Lindberg said in a press statement.

Luleå, also in northern Sweden, and Karlstad on the shores of Lake Vänern make up the rest of the top three.

The worst municipalities are Tanum, Älvdalen and Vansbro.

Swedish vocabulary: a municipality – en kommun

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TODAY IN SWEDEN

Today in Sweden: A roundup of the latest news on Tuesday

Swedish transport chiefs back new Öresund link – but not yet, new startups drop 27 percent on peak year, and Swedish property prices just rose for the sixth consecutive month. Here's the latest news.

Published: 2 July 2024 06:49 CEST
Today in Sweden: A roundup of the latest news on Tuesday

Swedish transport chiefs back new Öresund link – but not yet

A new transport link between Sweden and Denmark is not yet needed, according to an analysis by the Swedish Transport Administration. 

“There is a societal benefit to developing new infrastructure across the strait. But we see no need for capacity reasons until in the very long term,” Lars Brümmer, Transport Administration strategist and project manager, told a press conference on Monday.

The Transport Administration believes that the Öresund Bridge will have enough rail capacity for another 25 years. The more urgent measures to improve the connection between the two countries are all land-based, including two new tracks between Hässleholm and Lund, as well as increasing capacity north of Hässleholm. That should be prioritised over new links across the Öresund Strait, it argues.

According to the Transport Administration’s report, the biggest threat to the railway connection across the Öresund in the short term is border checks, which have slowed down journey times between Copenhagen and Malmö.

Swedish vocabulary: a reason – ett skäl

Swedish new businesses drop 27 percent on peak year

A total of 29,384 businesses were started in Sweden in the first half of 2024, according to statistics from the Swedish Companies Registration Office reported by invoicing company Visma. That’s a decrease of nine percent compared to the same period 2023.

Västerbotten in northern Sweden was the only region that bucked the train, with growth of one percent. But at the other end of the scale, in Uppsala and Kronoberg the number of new startups decreased by 24 and 23 percent, respectively.

Sweden has been on a steady downward curve since the peak in 2021, when 40,108 businesses were started in the first six months of the year. 

Visma believes that unstable global geopolitics are a major factor behind the slowdown.

“It’s very serious that new businesses continue to decrease, because four out of five jobs are created in small and medium-sized businesses. More businesses need to be launched in the Swedish recession, not fewer,” said Visma business expert Boo Gunnarson in a statement.

Swedish vocabulary: a business/company – ett företag

Swedish property prices rise sixth month in a row

Swedish property prices rose for the sixth consecutive month in June.

Figures from state-owned mortgage bank SBAB and property site Booli indicate an increase of 0.2 percent in June, or 0.5 percent if adjusted for seasonal effects. In other words, property prices have increased 6.6 percent since the turn of the year, buoyed by falling interest rates.

The price of a detached home rose 0.3 percent in June and 0.6 percent for apartments, adjusted for seasonal effects.

That’s a bigger rise than normal for detached homes in the month of June, when activity normally slows as summer begins.

Swedish vocabulary: property prices – bostadspriser 

Swedish town puts one-krona plot campaign on hold after media frenzy

When Götene, a quiet lakeside municipality in Western Sweden, launched a campaign in April to sell plots of land for one krona per square metre, they never could have guessed that they’d be fielding thousands of calls from across the world a few months later.

All the media attention has put Götene municipality into “crisis mode”, mayor Johan Månsson told The Local, describing the situation as “like winning the lottery”. There are only one or two people manning the phone lines, which have been ringing constantly for the past week.

“It’s impossible to handle, we’ve had to pause the campaign until August 7th so we can catch up with all the expressions of interest.”

The media interest has also resulted in “millions of kronor worth of marketing” for Götene, Månsson said, with CNN describing the lakeside region as “idyllic” and “rural Sweden at its finest”.

“I’m not convinced that those of us working in the region or the people living here have really taken in what’s happening and what has happened,” he said. “I think it will take a while before we do. It’s fantastic.”

Swedish vocabulary: one krona – en krona (or if you’re talking about a one-krona coin, en enkrona)

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