‘I don’t think anybody wants treaty change now’

The refugee crisis and Brexit were top of the agenda when Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven held talks with his UK counterpart David Cameron on an official visit to London.

Published: 3 November 2015 10:28 CET

'I don't think anybody wants treaty change now'

Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and the UK's David Cameron. Photo: AP Photo/Tim Ireland

The discussions came at a crucial time for both nations regarding foreign policy. Sweden is currently campaigning for other EU member states – including the UK – to take in a greater share of refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East and Africa. Meanwhile Britain is seeking support for its negotiation for treaty change with the European Union.

But Löfven, who heads up Sweden's ruling centre-left Social Democrat-Green coalition, suggested that right-wing Conservative leader Cameron should not count on the Nordic country's backing during a precarious time for the union as it continues to tackle the refugee crisis.

Speaking to international media after the meeting late on Monday – after his plane from Stockholm was delayed due to fog in London – the Swedish premier said he hoped the UK would remain within the EU, but advised against radical legislative action.

“I don't think anybody wants treaty change right now. (…) I see that as a very difficult issue and you have to find other technical solutions to handle those kinds of issues,” Löfven told Sky News.

David Cameron and Stefan Löfven outside 10 Downing Street. Photo: AP Photo/Tim Ireland

Last month the UK's Finance Minister George Osborne visited Stockholm as part of his efforts to drum up support for the idea that Britain should be allowed to renegotiate its relationship with the other 27 member states, before UK voters are given the chance to decide whether to remain 'in or out' of the European Union.

But Löfven was reluctant to offer Swedish support for the scheme on Monday.

“I cannot see a country that wants to go into a process of treaty change, not least because of the issue with the refugee crisis,” he told Sky News.

Up to 190,000 people are expected to seek asylum in Sweden in 2015 and while Löfven has praised his country's response to the crisis he has warned that it is “approaching the limit” of its reception capacity.

The UK, on the other hand, has chosen to not be part of the EU's common asylum policies, with Cameron's government saying it would be able to accept 20,000 Syrians in the coming five years – the number of asylum applications Sweden receives in a month.

Swedish ministers have previously blasted EU member states for not doing enough to ease the burden on Sweden and other nations such as Germany taking in unprecedented numbers of refugees, but Löfven refrained from criticizing his host country on Monday.

“All EU countries must take their responsibility and we need a completely new redistribution system within the EU,” Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter quoted Löfven as saying after the meeting.

“[Cameron] said that the country does its part outside of the redistribution system and that they are accepting a few thousands. That's what the UK insists and continues to insist,” he said.

Stefan Löfven also met with the UK's opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn during his visit.

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.