- Talks will not be ready by Wednesday deadline: SvD
- Moderates ‘a little stressed’ ahead of Wednesday talks deadline
- Right-bloc party leaders held weekend talks at castle
- Sweden Democrats ‘do not want Liberals in government’
- Sweden’s PM hopeful updates speaker on government talks
- Left MP who waved PKK flag to chair parliament’s Civil Affairs committee
- SD Islam critic to chair parliament’s justice committee
- Moderate leader gets ‘two weeks’ to form next Swedish government
- King Carl XVI Gustaf formally opens parliament
- Right bloc talks ‘going extremely well’: Moderate leader
- Sweden Democrat candidate appointed deputy speaker on second attempt
- Andeas Norlén voted back as Speaker after Parliament reopens
- Moderate Party leader tasked with negotiating Sweden’s next government
- Liberal leader: SD should be kept out of any future government
- Centre Party leader Annie Lööf resigns
- Sweden’s PM Magdalena Andersson hands in resignation to the Speaker
- Right-wing bloc wins the election with 176 mandates to left bloc’s 173
Right-bloc party leaders held weekend talks at castle
On Monday evening, three of the four party leaders from the bloc pushing to form Sweden’s next government – Ulf Kristersson (Moderates), Ebba Busch (Christian Democrats) and Johan Pehrson (Liberals) – left Tidö Slott, a historic mansion outside the city of Västerås where they had been holding weekend crunch talks over the shape of the next government coalition.
According to Aftonbladet, Henrik Vinge, group leader of the fourth party in the bloc, the Sweden Democrats, also left the castle on Monday evening.
Kristersson is due to hand in a final report to Speaker Andreas Norlén on Wednesday, on whether he has reached an agreement with the three other party leaders on which parties should form Sweden’s next government, and won their backing for a prime ministerial vote in parliament.
The parliament could then hold a vote on him as prime minister as early as Friday.
Richard Jomshof, one of the staunchest Islam critics within the Sweden Democrats, will chair the parliament’s justice committee, giving him considerable prestige and the power to shape the process through which law and order policy is developed.
“This is important for us. This is a milestone in the party’s history,” Jomshof, one of the original ‘gang of four’ who modernised the party, told Swedish state broadcaster SR. “My hope is that we will quite quickly get a good cooperation going which will show voters that we are ready to make fundamental changes.”
According to the press release from the party, Aron Emilsson will become chair of the Committee on Foreign Policy, while Tobias Andersson will become Chair of the Committee on Industry and Trade.
Jomshof is most controversial due to his assertion that Islam is “a despicable ideology and religion”.
As soon as he was appointed, he reasserted his position, writing in a tweet, “Islam is worse than Christendom, on all levels”.
Sweden Democrat to chair parliament’s justice committee
The far-right Sweden Democrats have won the right to appoint the chair of the Swedish parliament’s Committee on Justice, given the party a chance to shape the way law and order policy is developed in Sweden over the coming parliamentary term.
While the votes of every member in a parliamentary committees count equally, the chair has influence over the committee’s agenda and over how meetings are directed, with the position also bringing prestige.
In a joint press release, the Moderates, Sweden Democrats Christian Democrats, Liberal Parties said they had reached agreement on all chair, deputy chair and committee member positions their bloc is entitled to.
As well as justice, the Sweden Democrats also won the right to appoint the chair of the the Committee on the Labour Market, giving it powers, among other things, to shape plans to tighten labour market migration, the chair of the Committee on Industry and Trade, and, perhaps the most prestigious position, the chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The party won deputy chair positions of the Committee on Civil Affairs, the Committee on Transport and Communications, the Committee on Defence, and the Committee on Taxation.
The Moderate Party will chair the Committee on Social Insurance, which has control of migration policy, the Committee on Finance, and the Committee on European Union Affairs.
The Liberal Party will chair the Committee on Education, matching its ambition to be Sweden’s kunskapspartiet, or “party of knowledge”.
The Christian Democrats will chair the Committee on Health and Welfare.
King Carl XVI Gustaf formally opens parliament
Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf formally opened Sweden’s new parliamentary term with a speech in the main chamber, in which he looked back to the first time he opened parliament in 1974.
“Since then, nearly 50 years have passed. Crises have come and gone bringing palpable stresses, but as a country we have brought ourselves through it all together,” he said.
“Do your best for Sweden and its citizens,” he told the sitting MPs. I wish all of you who have been elected to represent Sweden’s people, energy, bravery and wisdom for your important work.”
Right bloc talks ‘going extremely well’: Moderate leader
Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson has said that the negotiations with the Christian Democrat, Sweden Democrat, and Liberal Parties over forming the next government were progressing smoothly with the shape of Sweden’s next government starting to look clear.
“It’s going very well. We are moving forwards step by step,” he said after Speaker Andreas Norlén announced that he would call him in for an update on the talks on Wednesday.
Kristersson said he now had “a good idea” of how the next government would look, indicating that he may have reached a broad agreement on which political parties will be part of the new government.
After that the parties will each select their parliamentary leaders and then vote on who should chair each of the parliamentary committees.
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- Who is Sweden’s parliamentary speaker Andreas Norlén?
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- Why does Sweden allow schools to make profits?
- And why do Swedes enjoy picking mushrooms so much?
All this and more on Sweden in Focus.
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In a joint press release announcing the decision, the parties also agreed that the Sweden Democrats would be given eight of the 16 chairmanships the bloc will have of parliamentary committees and that MPs for all four parties would back Julia Kronlid, the Sweden Democrats’ Second Deputy Leader, as the second deputy Speaker, serving under Norlén.
Friday, September 23rd:
Sweden’s Social Democrats said they would back a Moderate party candidate as the Speaker of the Riksdag parliament, in a move that seemed calculated to complicate the right bloc’s government negotiations. Read story here.
Sweden’s new immigrant party, Nyans, has won council seats in the port city of Landskrona and the Stockholm suburb of Botkyrka, its first elected positions since it was founded in 2019.
Ever since the September 11 election, it has been touch and go whether the party would make it over the two percent threshold to enter the council in the Landskrona, but after the vote count was finally complete on Wednesday morning, the party had gained its first council seat.
“It feels super exciting to get the chance to affect and experience how political work takes place on the city council,” the party’s lead candidate Sead Busuladzic, told Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT.
The party’s founder Mikail Yüksel is expected to take the seat in Botkyrka. Read story here.
The speaker of Sweden’s parliament has nominated Ulf Kristersson as his first candidate for prime minister, meaning the Moderate party leader now must strike deal with the far-right Sweden Democrats and other parties to pass a vote in parliament.
Andreas Norlén, Speaker of Sweden’s Parliament, said at a press conference on Monday afternoon that after holding talks with the leaders of all eight of Sweden’s parliamentary parties he had identified Kristersson as the one most likely to be voted in by parliament as Prime Minister.
“This has been a pretty simple decision to make,” he said. “The information I have received is that the negotiations, as the party leaders have said earlier today, are continuing to be carried out in a good spirit, and that they hope to reach a result.”
Under Sweden’s system of negative parliamentarianism, a prime ministerial candidate needs only to convince a majority of members of parliament not to vote against them.
He said that he was not giving Kristersson a deadline to complete the task as he felt that should be the responsibility of his successor as Speaker, who will be chosen by MPs on Monday when the new parliament sits for the first time.
READ ALSO: Moderate Party leader tasked with negotiating Sweden’s next government
When Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson was interviewed after his meeting with the Speaker, he reiterated that while his goal was for his party to have ministerial posts in the new government, policy issues were the priority.
“For me, personally, and for my party, the policies are what are most important,” he said.
When asked if he aimed for his party to have ministerial posts, and chairmanship positions in the parliament’s committees, he said that his party was calling for both of these things.
“Sweden would be in a better condition with a majority government,” he said on the issue of whether his party should be in the coalition. “
“It would be pretty reasonable if we had them,” he said of has party getting chair positions in parliamentary committees.
Moderate leader meets Speaker in first of talks ahead of PM vote
The Moderate Party’s leader Ulf Kristersson has declared his intention to “build a government for all Swedes”, after holding the first of the day’s meetings with Andreas Norlén, Speaker of the Swedish parliament.
“My goal is clear,” he said. “I want to build a government for all Swedes. All Swedes who are now worried about different things in our society. I want to build a government that brings people together and doesn’t split them, which unites and does not divide. From a divided country to a united one.”
He said that he had told the Speaker that his negotiations with the Christian Democrats, Sweden Democrats and the Liberals had been proceeding well since they began on Thursday.
“My message to the Speaker was that the negotiations are going well, that they cover all issues, and that they cover everything around the political direction of a new government, that they cover the ability to cooperate in parliament. These are very broad negotiations and nothing is ready until it’s ready.”
READ ALSO: Moderate Party leader: ‘We want a government for all Swedes’
Parliament’s speaker to meet seven party leaders, with press conference at 2.30pm
Andreas Norlén, Speaker of the Swedish parliament, will on Monday meet the leaders of seven of Sweden’s eight parliamentary parties to discuss which candidate for prime minister their parties are likely to support, vote against, or to abstain over, if they were to stand before parliament for a vote.
He will meet the parties in order of their result in the election:
10.30 Moderates
10.55 Sweden Democrats
11.20 Centre Party
11.45 Left Party
12.10 Green Party
13.00 Christian Democrats
13.25 Liberals
He will then hold a press conference to discuss the result of the talks at 2.30pm.
Liberal Party will not be thrown out of EU’s liberal group: chair
Sweden’s Liberal Party will not be ejected from Renew Europe, the grouping of liberal parties within the European Parliament, despite criticism of its decision to join or support a government which requires the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats to take power.
Antoine Guéry, the MEP from France’s En Marche party who currently chairs the grouping, told Swedish state broadcaster SVT on Monday that the Swedish Liberals’ place was secure.
“There was a normal discussion in the group after the election on the situation of the Liberals,” he said. “But it was not about whether they should be able to stay in the group.”
Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter newspaper on Saturday reported that some MEPs had questioned whether the party should be allowed to stay part of Renew Europe.
Moderates: 19.1
Left Party: 6.7 (+0,1)
Centre Party: 6.7
Christian Democrats: 5,3 (-0.1)
Green Party: 5.1 (+0,1)
Liberal Party 4.6
- Swedish PM formally tenders resignation to speaker of parliament
- So who is currently Prime Minister of Sweden?
Centre Party leader Annie Lööf resigns
The leader of Sweden’s Centre Party announced on Thursday that she was stepping down as leader of the party she has led since 2011.
Lööf, whose centre-right party broke from its former allies on the right over their support for the far-right Sweden Democrats, said she would stay on as leader until the party had selected a replacement.
As she resigned, she said she was “standing tall” in the knowledge that she had stuck to her principles and refused to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats. She said she was “convinced that there are other forces which will push back when the limits of decency are being passed”.
The decision, she said, was partly influenced by the threats and abusive posts online she has faced, partly by the poor election result, partly to spend more time with her young daughters, and partly because, after 11 years in the post, she felt it was time to go.
READ ALSO: Annie Lööf to step down as Centre Party leader
Sweden Democrats criticised by press freedom group
The press freedom group, Reporters Without Borders, has sharply criticised the behaviour of the Sweden Democrats party in the run-up to, and aftermath of, Sunday’s election. The group said the way the party had blocked journalists’ access to its election event and threatened the media was “extremely worrying”.
The party’s chief of staff, Linus Bylund, made comments to state broadcaster SVT about “journalist rugby”, or “pushing journalists around”, and later refused to answer any questions from the Aftonbladet tabloid on migration policy.
“It is extremely worrying that a representative of the Swedish Democrats publicly encourages ‘pushing around’ journalists whose work is to hold politicians accountable and report in the public interest,” Erik Halkjaer, president of RSF Sweden said. “Politicians should create favourable conditions for journalism, not undermine them,” he said.
See the Reporters Without Borders article here.
Wednesday, September 14th:
Liberal MP pledges to block any government that includes Sweden Democrats
Romina Pourmokhtari, head of the Liberal Party’s youth party, and one of this year’s new MPs, has promised to vote down any government which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats.
“We took this decision at our national congress,” she wrote. “I stood for this election to protect human rights and the freedom of individuals. That’s where we Liberals are going to have to put our energy in the coming years.
Sweden Democrat possible speaker of parliament
Björn Söder, the Sweden Democrat politician who served as Deputy Speaker of Parliament between September 2014 and September 2018, is a possible favourite to replace Andreas Norlén in the role, the Aftonbladet newspaper has claimed, based on the former principle that the largest party in a government coalition should be able to appoint the Speaker.
The Sweden Democrats are also, as the largest party in parliament, likely to take over the Moderate Party’s parliamentary quarters in the spacious Skandia house, and also to take over the use of the second chamber in the old parliamentary building as the party’s group meeting room.
Monday September 12th:
Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson holds ‘constructive’ talks with support parties
The Moderate Party’s leader Ulf Kristersson met Sweden Democrat leader Ulf Kristersson for lunch on Monday, and held meetings with Ebba Busch, leader of the Christian Democrats, and Johan Pehrson, leader of the Liberal Party, later that afternoon.
“These conversations have been carried out in an extremely constructive spirit,” the Moderate Party’s General Secretary, Gunnar Strömmer, said.
Linus Bylund, chief of staff of the Sweden Democrats, refused to give any commentary on the meeting, saying only that, while he himself intended to go home and eat isterband, a suet and grain sausage popular in southern Sweden, his leader Jimmie Åkesson, was definitely not eating isterband.
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