Kaczyński, Lech; Tusk, Donald; Reinfeldt, Fredrik; Barroso, José Manuel; Buzek, JerzyPolish Pres. Lech Kaczyński (front) showing a signed document of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, with (left to right) Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, European Commission Pres. José Manuel Barroso, and European Parliament Pres. Jerzy Buzek, 2009.Czarek Sokolowski/AP
In May 2013 Sweden was rocked by several nights of rioting that began in the Stockholm suburb of Husby on May 19 and spread to other Swedish cities by the end of the week. The initial catalyst of the rioting and arson, mostly by immigrant youths, was thought to have been the fatal police shooting of an elderly man in Husby. Many of those opposed to the country’s liberal immigration policy, such as the right-wing Sweden Democrats, later blamed that policy for the upheaval. Others saw the outbreak as the product of frustration with the country’s high rate of joblessness among the young (27 percent for those age 15–24 in April 2013) and dissatisfaction with a growing gap between those at the high and low ends of Sweden’s income scale
These developments and the growing gap between the more-affluent Swedes and those who lacked jobs and good incomes contributed to the creation of a Swedish electorate that was ready for a change of leadership. In parliamentary elections in September 2014, the Red-Green coalition, led by the Social Democratic Party, captured some 44 percent of the vote to displace the centre-right Alliance led by Reinfeldt, which tallied about 39 percent of the vote. Although the Sweden Democrats’ slice of the electoral pie widened to 13 percent, neither of the coalitions was interested in governing with them. In October, after Reinfeldt resigned—having served the longest tenure of any conservative prime minister in Swedish history—Stefan Löfven, leader of the Social Democrats, became prime minister at the head of a minority coalition government with the Green Party. Some two months later, this new government looked ready to fall when its budget was rejected by parliament, leading Löfven to call for early elections in March that seemed to promise further gains for the far right. In late December Löfven’s government won a reprieve when it reached a deal with the Moderate Party-led Alliance opposition to remain in power by adopting the opposition’s budget. The elections were cancelled as both the government and the Alliance sought to keep the Sweden Democrats on the margins of power.
Löfven, StefanStefan Löfven.Martina Huber/Government Offices of Sweden
Sweden was at the centre of the migrant crisis that swept through much of Europe in 2015. As a prosperous country with a generous welfare system and a reputation for being hospitable, Sweden, like Germany, became a preferred destination for many of the more than one million migrants who entered Europe in 2015 after fleeing turmoil in the Middle East (most notably the Syrian Civil War) and Africa. By the end of the year, more than 160,000 migrants had officially applied for asylum in Sweden, the largest per capita influx for any country during the crisis. As 2015 came to a close, Swedish social service facilities were overwhelmed, and, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris in November, fear grew that Islamist terrorists might be posing as migrants and refugees—fears that played into the anti-immigrant agenda of the Sweden Democrats and others on the political right. In an attempt to tighten its open borders, in early January 2016, for the first time in decades, Sweden required identification documents from everyone coming into the country from Denmark. Moreover, at the end of January the Swedish government announced that it would be denying refugee status to some 60,000 (and perhaps as many as 80,000) migrants who had sought asylum in 2015. Those migrants (many of whom had come from Afghanistan or Africa) were to be returned to their homelands or to other European countries through which they had passed en route to Sweden.
As Russia’s military presence in the Baltic states in particular and in Europe generally became increasingly aggressive in the 2010s (most notably its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and military intervention in eastern Ukraine), the Swedish government contemplated enhanced involvement with NATO. In 2014, responding to growing encroachment by Russian forces—including a mock air attack on the Stockholm region by Russian warplanes in 2013—Sweden agreed to provide “host nation” support for NATO forces. With ratification of that agreement pending, in 2016 Sweden became the target of a massive disinformation campaign that was believed to have originated in Russia and that was aimed at sowing domestic discord in Sweden, fostering suspicion of NATO, and stanching criticism of Russia. Fake news stories were generated and forged documents were circulated. The Swedish response included ratification of the “host nation” agreement in May 2016, the return of a permanent troop presence to the Baltic island of Gotland in October 2016 (absent since 2005), and the reinstatement of conscription (halted in 2010) in February 2017, effective January 2018.
On April 7, 2017, Sweden was stunned after four individuals were killed and another 15 injured when a hijacked truck was used to run down pedestrians in central Stockholm. The incident was viewed as a terrorist attack, with an Uzbekistan-born man identified as the principal suspect. However, no terrorist organizations claimed responsibility for the attack in its immediate aftermath.
Violence in general had escalated in Sweden, with more than 40 shooting deaths in 2017. The surge in violence mirrored an increase in illegal weapons—including grenades—that were being smuggled into Sweden. Much of the violence was gang-related. In August 2018 one the biggest outbreaks of gang violence to date erupted when as many as 100 automobiles were set on fire in Gothenburg, Trollhättan, Falkenberg, and Stockholm, in what officials characterized as an “organized” action. As fear of crime and violence grew among Swedes, the Sweden Democrats continued to put the blame on the government’s lenient immigration policies, though political consensus on immigration had already shifted to the point that applications for asylum had dropped to about 15,000 individuals by the first half of 2016. A number of observers presented the increase in violence and gang activity as a failure to integrate into Swedish society those who had already immigrated, not as an immigration problem. Nevertheless, as the September 9, 2018, parliamentary election approached, the Sweden Democrats ratcheted up their anti-immigrant rhetoric, even as the party sought to soften its image and distance itself from its neo-Nazi roots.
The Sweden Democrats also advocated for Sweden’s withdrawal from the European Union (branded “Swexit”—after “Brexit,” the moniker for the British exit from the EU). That issue, however, got the Sweden Democrats much less traction than their anti-immigrant stance, which some pundits believed might win the party as much as one-fifth of the national vote. Neither the opposition Alliance—comprising the Moderates, the Liberals, the Christian Democrats, and the Centre Party and led by Moderate Ulf Kristersson—nor the governing Red-Green block and its Left Party allies entered the election with any willingness to join coalition rule with the Sweden Democrats. Löfven’s ruling coalition had the advantage of having overseen a robust economy. During its tenure in government, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Sweden’s GDP grew by more than 2 percent annually (reaching 4.5 percent in 2015), inflation fluctuated between 0.2 percent and 1.9 percent, and the unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent to 6.3 percent. Still, crime, violence, and immigration appeared to be the election’s defining issues.
When the votes were counted, the Sweden Democrats had made gains, but not as big as they had hoped: they captured about 18 percent of the vote, winning the support of about one in six Swedish voters rather than one in five. Nonetheless, the strong showing of the Sweden Democrats echoed the results in other recent European elections where populist anti-immigrant parties performed very well. With votes from overseas still to be tabulated, the two major blocs of parties were in a virtual dead heat, each having captured some 40 percent of the vote, but neither was set to hold enough seats to form a majority government. The opposition called on Löfven to resign, but, with two weeks remaining in the Riksdag’s term, he refused, setting the stage for protracted negotiations to determine who would govern. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica