Sweden. Issues in national politics ANDERS WIDFELDT

Transcription

1 European Journal of Political Research 41: , Sweden ANDERS WIDFELDT University of Aberdeen, UK Issues in national politics Despite no elections being held, the year 2001 in Swedish politics was more eventful than its predecessor The main event during the year was Sweden chairing the European Union (EU) presidency between January and June. The single-party Social Democratic minority Government stayed in office, due to parliamentary support from the Left and Green parties. Thus, despite a difficult majority situation, the Government seems certain to survive the entire election period. The Swedish EU presidency was overshadowed by events surrounding the Göteborg Summit on 15 and 16 June. Violent demonstrators vandalised parts of the city centre, and attacked anyone who tried to stop them. The riots appear to have started when demonstrators were stopped from entering the enclosed area where the summit conference was held. On a couple of occasions the police lost control. No one was killed, but many were injured, some seriously. The subsequent legal processes will last well into The events led to a heated debate. The police was criticised for bad organisation and heavy-handedness. Critics also argued that the riots were an expression of youth alienation, and a protest against a distant and unaccountable European Union. On the other hand, it was argued that violent protests such as these represent a threat to democracy. There were also demonstrations at other meetings related to the EU presidency, for example at the Stockholm Summit in March and a meeting of the EU ministers of finance and heads of central banks in Malmö in April. However, the events in Göteborg were by far the most serious. Politically, the Swedish EU presidency was considered to have been a qualified success. The government s main priorities for the presidency were employment, the environment and enlargement. In concrete terms, progress in the areas of employment and environment was relatively limited. Several of the decisions taken were expressions of intent rather than firm commitments. For example, the Göteborg Summit decided upon a strategy for sus- Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

2 1090 anders widfeldt Table 1. Cabinet composition For the composition of Persson II on 1 January 2001, see Political Data Yearbook 2000: 421. Changes during 2001: Ministry of Foreign Affairs/utrikesdepartementet: M.-I. Klingvall (1946 female) until 16 November tainable development, meaning that the environmental consequences will be investigated before any EU decisions are taken. Similarly, the Stockholm Summit in March decided on employment targets (for example, that 50 per cent of those aged over 55 should be in employment by 2010, as opposed to 38 per cent in 2001). The Stockholm Summit also discussed demographic issues and improvements in working conditions. The government s main priority, however, was EU enlargement. For the Swedish presidency to be considered a success, a breakthrough in the enlargement process was required. The conditions for such a breakthrough were not favourable after Ireland voted against the Treaty of Nice (negotiated in December 2000) in a referendum in early June. However, the Göteborg Summit agreed on a timetable for the enlargement process, according to which the first new Member States will enter the European Union in June This was generally regarded as an important achievement. Other notable decisions during the Swedish EU presidency included a set of rules for openness and public access to EU documents, which to some extent are inspired by the traditional Swedish principle of open access to public documents, and a decision to adopt a system devised by Baron Alexandre Lamfalussy, designed to speed up financial market legislation. Domestically, the year was more stable than had been predicted. The Social Democratic Government stayed in office despite a difficult majority situation. In 1998, the Social Democratic Party had suffered its worst result in a parliamentary election since 1921, gaining only 36.4 per cent of the vote. Despite this setback, the party continued in office after the election, as a single-party minority Government with parliamentary support from the Left and Green parties. Many commentators had predicted that this cooperation pact would not last throughout the election period, and the year 2001 had several potential stumbling blocks. However, the Government and the parliamentary support parties managed to reach agreements on the Spring budget, presented to Parliament in April, as well as the main budget in September (the budget process is discussed further below). Thus, at the end of the year, the

3 sweden 1091 government was virtually certain to survive until the next election, due to be held on 15 September The only ministerial casualty during 2001 took place in November, when the Minister for Immigration and Foreign Aid, Maj-Inger Klingvall, resigned after the Social Democratic Party Congress voted her out of the party s Executive Committee. Klingvall had been subjected to internal party criticism for alleged lack of understanding of the situation for asylum seekers. Klingvall s successor, Mr Jan O. Karlsson, was due to take office in January There were many difficulties in the budget negotiations between the Government and the support parties. The Left Party demanded increased levels of sickness and unemployment benefits. This was a key issue during the Spring budget negotiations. To some extent, the solution was to push the resolution of these differences into the future. A key reason why an agreement was reached seemed to be a joint article in the leading broadsheet Dagens Nyheter on 1 April, in which Prime Minister Göran Persson and the Left Party leader, Ms Gudrun Schyman, argued for future increases in welfare spending, although no commitments were made in terms of size or timing. The Green Party pushed the issue of a green tax shift, in which taxes on fuel and energy are raised in exchange for lower taxes on work. This demand was taken into account in the September budget. Despite these and other concessions, however, the Social Democratic Government managed to maintain political and economic stability. The September budget was regarded as expansionary, with the 2002 election firmly in mind. The opposition parties criticised the government for unjustified optimism in its outlook and projections, especially considering the international destabilisation that followed the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September. The budget had a surplus of about SEK40 billion, or a projected 3.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP); a decline of 0.5 percentage points compared to The national debt was projected to rise slightly in absolute terms in 2002, from SEK1.106 billion to SEK1.140 billion, but to continue going down relative to GDP, from 51.1 to 49.3 per cent. The economy suffered a moderate downturn. According to a report by the National Institute of Economic Research published in March 2002, Sweden s GDP grew by 1.2 per cent in 2001, which was one-third of the growth in However, the decline in unemployment, which had begun in the mid-1990s, continued. According to statistics from the Labour Market Board, the average monthly unemployment level for 2001 was 6.9 per cent (including those involved in labour market schemes), compared to 7.9 per cent in This was considerably lower than in the early and mid-1990s when unemployment reached 15 per cent, but critics still argued that the 2001 figure was too high, given that the country was not in deep recession. Inflation rose somewhat, but

4 1092 anders widfeldt largely stayed within the Central Bank s target of 2 per cent, with a tolerance level of ±1 percentage point. According to Statistics Sweden, the monthly Consumer Price Index varied between 1.6 and 3.2 per cent during the year. The Social Democratic Party had suffered badly in opinion polls since the mid-1990s. However, there were signs of a recovery towards the end of 2001, with support levels approaching 40 per cent. There were several reasons for this, but international factors seemed to have played a key role. Despite the troubles surrounding the Göteborg Summit, the Swedish European Union presidency appears to have been a success for the government. Its status as a player in the international arena increased, for example when Prime Minister Göran Persson made a publicised visit to Korea as a representative of the EU, and when Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush attended meetings in Stockholm and Göteborg, respectively. Foreign Secretary Anna Lindh also earned international respect, not least for her decisive handling of the Kosovo crisis. Persson s standing, nationally as well as internationally, seemed to improve further when he quickly and decisively stated that the United States had a right to respond militarily to the terrorist attacks of 11 September. These factors, plus a number of apparently successful appearances on television talk shows contributed to a significant improvement in Persson s personal popularity. In the latter half of 2001, a number of polls had Persson as the country s most popular party leader for the first time since he took office in It seems as if Persson s support for the joint United States-United Kingdom antiterrorist actions in Afghanistan went down well among voters in the centre and centre-right, which are segments he intends to target in the 2002 election. The public reaction to the 11 September attacks was somewhat mixed. A Gallup poll taken shortly afterwards indicated public scepticism against a military response. This was partly contradicted by subsequent polls, but the picture was not entirely clear. A Temo poll taken two weeks after the attack suggested that a clear majority thought that Prime Minister Persson was right in supporting a military response, but at the same time a majority was against such a response if it led to innocent victims. New polls in early October indicated that between 52 and 56 per cent supported the military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Among the political parties, the Left and Green parties were the most sceptical about a military response. There was also some disagreement inside the Social Democratic Party. Persson s predecessor as prime minister, Ingvar Carlsson, and former Minister for Education, Carl Tham, publicly criticised the role of the United States in world politics in a newspaper article that was widely interpreted as criticism of Persson s pro- United States position. On the whole, however, these disagreements did not lead to serious disputes. The cooperation pact between the Social Democrats

5 sweden 1093 and the Left and Green parties was not threatened, partly because the most important decisions before the 2002 election were already taken by the time of the terrorist crisis. The Social Democratic Party Congress in November voted overwhelmingly in favour of the government s support for the attack on the Afghan regime. The Centre Party changed leader in Lennart Daléus, who had taken over as leader from Olof Johansson in 1998, had had a very difficult time. The 1998 election result (5.1 per cent of the vote) was the party s worst ever performance. Opinion polls in 1999 and 2000 did not indicate a recovery; instead the party seemed in danger of falling below the 4 per cent level required for parliamentary representation. With no signs of improvement in the polls, Daléus resigned in January His successor, Maud Olofsson, was appointed at a special party congress in March. Following Olofsson s appointment, the party s opinion poll ratings improved significantly. However, the effect was temporary and, towards the end of the year, support for the Centre Party was back to levels similar to those that forced Daléus to resign. Olofsson is regarded as charismatic, but possibly somewhat weak on substance. She will not be a Member of Parliament until the 2002 election. Her appointment did not lead to any direct changes in the party s policies. The Centre Party remains critical of nuclear power and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), but has joined forces with the Moderate, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties in trying to oust the Social Democratic Government. Swedish membership of the EMU has been on the agenda ever since Sweden joined the European Union in As reported in Political Data Yearbook 1997, Sweden decided not to join the EMU from the outset. In the year 2000, however, the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic party congresses decided on positive positions concerning the EMU. Thus, four of the seven parliamentary parties were in favour of EMU membership with the Centre, Green and Left parties the remaining opponents. During 2001, Prime Minister Persson repeated his commitment to EMU membership, indicating that a referendum will be held in 2004 at the latest. The issue continues to be divisive inside the Social Democratic Party and, for most of 2000 and the first half of 2001, polls indicated clear anti-emu majorities among the public. Towards the end of 2001, however, public opinion had grown significantly more EMU-positive, with some polls indicating around 50 per cent in favour of Swedish membership. The reason may to some extent have been linked to the Swedish EU presidency, but a more important factor was probably the weakness of the Swedish currency, which made it very expensive for Swedes to travel abroad. Some experts predicted that public opinion would grow even more EMU-positive in 2002, when Euros will start being used in 12 EU Member States.

6 1094 anders widfeldt Another issue, which did not receive widespread public attention but whose long-term importance is considerable, is the debate about Swedish security policy. Traditionally, the Swedish security policy doctrine has consisted of two elements. First, peacetime non-alignment: Sweden has stayed outside all military alliances since the early nineteenth century. Second, wartime neutrality: Sweden has not been at war since This policy kept Sweden out of both world wars, and was a key element in Swedish identity during the Cold War. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this traditional policy became obsolete. In late 2000, the Government indicated that it intended to revise the security policy doctrine, and invited all parties to talks. However, the People s Party Liberals, thus far the only Swedish party openly to advocate entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), abandoned the talks after the Government indicated that NATO membership was not an option. The negotiations were set to continue into As reported in Political Data Yearbook 1997, the annual budget process was reformed in 1996, when it was divided into two phases. The Spring budget, delivered to Parliament in April, set a framework for income and expenditure levels, and their allocation to different expenditure areas. The Spring budget also decided on an overall limit on public expenditure for the next three years. The main budget, delivered to Parliament in September, had to follow the framework decided in the Spring budget. In June 2001, Parliament decided to amend this system. The budget process still consists of two phases, but the relative importance of the main budget has been increased. The Spring budget will decide on general economic policy guidelines, but no longer set a binding income and expenditure framework. The decision on a three-year limit on public spending has been moved to the main budget in September. This revised process will start to operate in time for the 2003 budget, which will be decided in Sources and references Swedish Government website: Swedish Parliament website: Website of the Swedish European Union presidency: Statistics Sweden website: National Institute of Economic Research website: