Three Swedish center-right parties agreed Friday to form a coalition government with the backing of the Sweden Democrats, a once-radical far-right organization that has moved closer to the mainstream but maintains a hard line on immigration.
The deal comes after a month of talks following the Sept. 11 election that gave the Sweden Democrats an unprecedented position of influence in Swedish politics, with more than 20% of the vote.
Opposition leader Ulf Kristersson told reporters that his moderate conservative party would form a center-right coalition government with the Liberals and Christian Democrats. The coalition will remain in “close collaboration” with Sweden’s Democrats, Kristersson said, depending on its majority in parliament, which will put the party in a position to influence politics on the margins, even without any seats in the closet.
The party was founded in the 1980s through other people who had been active in far-right groups, adding neo-Nazis. He toned down his rhetoric and expelled blatantly racist members under Jimmie Akesson, who took over as party leader in 2005. Since then, it has grown from a fringe movement with less than 2% to becoming the largest party of the moment in Sweden.
His good fortune in the September elections, followed two weeks later by the even stronger performance of the Brothers of Italy in the Italian elections, underscored a decades-long trend of incursions by far-right parties into European politics.
Akesson, who sees his party as far-right, said he would have liked to have closet seats for the Sweden Democrats but subsidized the treatment he would give his party influence over government policy, adding immigration and corrupt justice.
“For us, it has surely been decisive that a replacement of force is a paradigm shift in immigration policy,” Akesson said, adding that Sweden’s asylum regulations will be no more beneficial than required by the European Union, of which Sweden has been a member since 1995.
Sweden, along with Germany, stood out in Europe for its generous welcome to asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa until the 2015-2016 migration crisis led to stricter immigration controls.
Rising gang violence in immigrant-dominated neighborhoods has led to widespread calls for even stricter immigration controls and tougher consequences and deportations for foreign nationals who commit crimes in Sweden, policies long followed by the Sweden Democrats and followed in recent years across parties in both. the center-left and the center-right.
Kristersson, who is expected to lead the next government as prime minister, said his coalition and the Sweden Democrats had agreed to build criminal sentences for gang members, add those under 18 and introduce special zones for police to crack down on crime.
“We will also conduct a thorough review of the entire penal code, with more serious consequences for violent and sexual crimes,” Kristersson said on Facebook.
Kristersson met Friday with the speaker of parliament, who tasked him with officially forming a cabinet. A parliamentary vote on Kristersson’s election as prime minister is scheduled for Monday.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of the center-left Social Democrats continues to lead on an interim basis until a new government is formed. The Social Democrats, the dominant force in Swedish politics for most of the twentieth century, have gradually lost their position since the 1990s. The party has been in force for 8 years in volatile alliances with left and center parties.
Commenting on the new deal on Facebook, Andersson would exert influence the Sweden Democrats would exert over the new government, saying that “even if Ulf Kristersson becomes prime minister, Jimmie Akesson will rule. “
The government’s replacement comes at a delicate time for Sweden, which abandoned a long-standing policy of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO with neighboring Finland in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Their candidacies have met resistance from Turkey, a member of NATO, which has imposed a series of demands on Stockholm, added to repressing the Kurdish teams in exile that criticize the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and that Turkey accuses of terrorism.
Kristersson said his coalition supported an agreement that outgoing Sweden and Finns signed with Turkey at a NATO summit last summer.
“We will continue to work transparently with him and we will do so with the outgoing government,” he said. “We will do everything imaginable within the framework of this agreement to incorporate Sweden and Finland into NATO as soon as possible. “
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