STOCKHOLM—The leader of Sweden’s Moderates, Ulf Kristersson, said on Friday he aimed to form a three-party minority government with support from the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats after the right-wing bloc won a majority in last month’s election.
The new government plans to cut taxes, begin the process for building new nuclear power plants, cap benefits, tighten immigration rules and give police more powers as part of a policy deal with the Sweden Democrats.
“Change is not only necessary, change is also possible, and we four parties together can offer that change,” Kristersson, 58, told reporters .
Now Sweden’s largest right-wing party, the nationalistic Sweden Democrats’ ability to shape policy marks a huge shift in politics and would have been unthinkable less then a decade ago.
Leader Jimmie Akesson’s message that most of Sweden’s ills are a result of decades of over-generous immigration policies and a failure to integrate “new Swedes” has struck a chord with young voters in particular, making it all but impossible for the right-wing bloc to govern without his party’s support.
“For us in the Sweden Democrats ... a change of power also has to mean a paradigm shift regarding immigration and integration policy,” Akesson told the news conference.
“This is an important step. Sweden in this way is becoming more like other European countries where centre-right parties co-operate with radical right parties such as Denmark, Norway or Austria,” Jungar said.
The new government will make it harder for new immigrants who lack character to take advantage of Sweden’s social welfare system, while the overseas aid target of 1 percent of gross national income will be replaced by a fixed sum.
Challenges Ahead
Kristersson won a confirmation vote on Monday. But his party’s junior status could make governing over the next four years extremely difficult.He will have to rely on both the Sweden Democrats and Liberals, and also the Christian Democrats, who disagree strongly on many policies. Either could pull the plug on Kristersson’s government.
Measures to address climate change need to be thrashed and holes in the welfare system exposed by the pandemic need to be plugged. A planned surge in defence spending has to be financed.
Sweden is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and could be heading for recession next year, while Russia’s war in Ukraine has destabilised the Baltic region—Sweden’s backyard. Turkey could still block Sweden’s application to join NATO.
In the election on Sept. 11, the right-wing bloc secured a slim majority, winning 176 seats in the 349-member parliament.
The Sweden Democrats won 20.5 percent of the vote in September, against 19.1 percent for the Moderates.
The government was thrown into crisis in June 2021 when Prime Minister Stefan Löfven of the leftist Social Democrats party was ousted in a no-confidence vote for the first time in Swedish history.
