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‘The Swedish model can continue to deliver’

Sweden's finance minister Magdalena Andersson presented the government's spring budget proposal on Tuesday as it upgraded growth forecasts for the next couple of years.

Published: 18 April 2017 11:17 CEST
'The Swedish model can continue to deliver'
Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

The government expects GDP, one of the key indicators used to gauge the health of a country's economy, to grow by 2.6 percent this year, 2.1 percent next year and 2 percent in 2019.

“By pursuing a responsible fiscal policy since taking office, we have succeeded in bringing the huge public finance deficit we inherited back to surplus each year of this electoral period. This has placed us in an entirely new position and offers us new opportunities to meet social challenges. The Swedish model can continue to deliver,” said a confident finance minister before presenting the budget proposal to parliament.

Unemployment is expected to reach 6.6 percent this year and drop to 6.4 percent in 2018 and 6.3 percent the following year.

“Unemployment has fallen considerably since 2014 and is expected to continue to fall over the next few years. The employment rate of people aged 20-64 is now the highest ever recorded in the EU. Youth unemployment is the lowest in 13 years and long-term unemployment has fallen; Sweden now has the lowest long-term unemployment rate in the EU, together with Denmark,” said the finance ministry.

The budget surplus puts the centre-left Social Democrat-Green coalition government in a strong position ahead of Sweden's next general election in autumn 2018, said experts.

“It's good growth and that creates good conditions for the government. It could not have been better, and then you hand this out a little by little so that everyone is happy,” Annika Winsth, economist at Scandinavian banking giant Nordea, told the TT news agency.

Swedbank's economist Anna Breman echoed her comments. “There's a lot of election slogans,” she said. “Then there's focus on the labour market, knowledge, climate, equality and security.”

The centre-right opposition however accused the government of having too rosy an outlook. Jakob Forssmed of the Christian Democrats said the finance ministry was not doing enough to plug widening gaps in the labour market, where unemployment is growing among foreign-born and disabled people.

“The biggest gap is between those who have a job and those who do not, and that's why it is surprising that the government isn't doing more about it,” he said.

The Moderate Party's finance spokesperson Ulf Kristersson argued in a parliamentary debate on the budget that there could be trouble on the horizon. “It is not the government's tight, active finance policies that have led to better finances, but rather that we've gone from recession to an econonmic boom. If we were to get a new crisis, we would have dramatic deficits. Better savings are required during an economic boom.”

The key points in the government's spring budget proposal include more money for maternity care, mental health care for children, climate investments and the police, as well as higher taxes for those on medium and high incomes and lower taxes for pensioners.

The spring budget is an extension of the main autumn budget. In Sweden, all governments have the chance to revise their annual budget each spring, to adapt to events or economic changes that have emerged since the start of that year. It will need parliamentary approval.

READ ALSO: Five key points about Sweden's spring budget

READ ALSO: Funding boost won't save closed Swedish maternity ward

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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