Sweden’s right wing agrees to form minority govt with far-right backing

STOCKHOLM: Three Swedish right-wing parties will build a minority government with the unprecedented backing of the far-right Sweden Democrats, the parties said on Friday, unveiling plans for new nuclear reactors and a crime and immigration crackdown.

The incoming government will be made up of the conservative Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals, with the far-right Sweden Democrats remaining outside the coalition but providing key support in parliament.

The four presented a 62-page roadmap on Friday for their cooperation, outlining measures to address what they defined as the biggest challenges facing Sweden: rising crime, immigration, energy, healthcare, education, the economy and the climate.

“All this in what is possibly the most dangerous time for Sweden since World War II,” Moderates leader Ulf Kristesson told reporters in a reference to the war raging in Ukraine which prompted Sweden´s historic NATO membership application.

Parliament will vote on Kristersson as the new prime minister on Monday and the future government is expected to take office on Tuesday, just over a month after the right-wing won a narrow victory in a general election that ousted the Social Democrats after eight years in power. The anti-immigration and nationalist Sweden Democrats, once shunned as pariahs on Sweden´s political scene, were the big winners of the September 11 vote.

They emerged as the country´s second-largest party with a record 20.5 percent of votes, behind outgoing prime minister Magdalena Andersson´s Social Democrats, which have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s.

While far-right leader Jimmie Akesson said he “would have preferred to sit in government”, he stressed that the most important thing was that his party has influence over policy and that “the change of government represent a paradigm shift”.

“We are going to deliver policy, especially in those areas our voters think are extra important, and crime policy is one such area,” he told reporters. While the quartet presented a united front on Friday, they have traditionally been divided on a number of key policy areas and major concessions were made in the agreement, primarily to meet the far-right´s demands.

As Sweden struggles to contain soaring gang shootings, the roadmap calls for body searches in some disadvantaged areas, harsher sentences for repeat offenders, double sentences for certain crimes and anonymous witnesses. These were all major concessions by the small Liberal party.

It also calls for major cuts to generous refugee policies in Sweden, a country of 10.5 million that has welcomed around half a million asylum seekers in the past decade. The incoming government said it aims to reduce the number of quota refugees from 6,400 last year to 900 per year during its four-year mandate, and introduce incentives to encourage immigrants to return home.

It will also probe the possibility of keeping asylum seekers in transit centres during their application process, as well as ditch Sweden´s development aid target of one percent of GDP and introduce a national ban on begging.

In another measure bearing the stamp of the far-right, the parties also agreed to examine the possibility of “expelling foreigners for misconduct”. “Anyone in Sweden enjoying Swedish hospitality has an obligation to respect fundamental Swedish values and not disrespect the local population by their actions”, the document said.