Swedish PM hails legal gender law as ‘balanced and good’ 

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has spoken out in favour of the law on changing legal gender, which passed in the Swedish parliament on Wednesday, despite many within his own party criticising the legislation. 

“I think, all things taken together, it’s a balanced and good proposal. It’s been at the enquiry stage for ten years and there’s a very large majority in favour of it in Sweden’s parliament,” he said. “This is a fairly limited change which the overwhelming majority of Swedes are not going to notice at all, but which a number of Swedes are going to think is extremely valuable,” he said at a meeting in Brussels. 

Kristersson has come in for serious criticism over the law from many within his party and many outside it in the run-up to the vote. 

Swedish vocabulary: sammantaget – all things taken together/all things considered 

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden’s opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.”

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s.

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil.

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation.

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.

Swedish vocabulary: nödbromsen – the emergency brakes 

Sweden returns Finnish skulls to Finland

Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university is to hand over 82 remains of Finnish origin to Finland, the government has decided.

The institute’s anatomical collections contain human remains, mainly skulls, which were exhumed from Finnish graves in 1873 to be examined by researchers. This was because at the time, researchers viewed Finns as a non-European race.

KI has carried out an investigation to establish the origin and identity of the remains and requested that the government agree to their repatriation.

The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture has also asked Sweden for the remains to be repatriated. They will now be buried in Finnish soil.

Swedish vocabulary: kvarlevor – remains

New Folklistan party takes municipality seats 

The Folklistan party launched this month by former Christian Democrat MEP Sara Skyttedal and former Social Democrat Jan Emanuel has gained seats in the municipality in Åtvidaberg, near Linköping, after the two Christian Democrats in the council decided to move to the new party. 

“We are moving to Folklistan,” Joel Edoff, one of the party’s councillors told the Corren newspaper. 

Later on Thursday, the other of the two councillors, Fredrik Hanström, said he had changed his mind and would stay with the Christian Democrats, telling Corren he had “reconsidered”. 

Swedish vocabulary: att tänka efter – to reconsider