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The Swedish environmental party – the Greens – recently held its party congress. The Greens have been exceptionally successful in Sweden. Although they have never received more than eight percent of the vote in any parliamentary election (7.3 percent in the 2010 election is the highest to date), they have, through their wave-making role, helped influence the policies of both right-wing and left-wing governments.
In the early 2010s, the Greens helped the then right-wing liberal government to radicalize Swedish refugee policy. Between 2014 and 2021, the party was in government together with the Social Democrats. At that time, they held the post of Minister of Culture, among other things, and then succeeded in pushing through a politicization of Swedish publicly funded cultural life. They have been a driving force when it comes to ambitious Swedish climate policy, where Swedes have had to pay for the world’s highest reduction obligation on diesel. They were the driving force in the decisions taken in 2019 and 2020 to shut down and dismantle two functioning nuclear reactors. The official reason was that the reactors were not profitable, but the truth was that the government, under the influence of the Green Party, had modified energy taxes in such a way that nuclear power in particular could hardly become profitable. Today, most people agree that this was a fateful decision.
The 2022 parliamentary election was a major setback for the Green Party. Not only because the left-wing bloc that the Green Party belonged to lost government power, but also because the policy on which the right-wing bloc won the election was a kind of anti-Green Party policy. Everything that the Green Party had believed in and pushed forward was successfully attacked by the right in the election campaign.
Now there would be an end to generous immigration. Refugee policy would be reduced to the EU’s minimum level. Labor immigration, which had previously been exceptionally generous, would now be heavily regulated. Climate policy would become more realistic. Sweden’s share of global climate emissions is below 2 per thousand and the ambition that little Sweden would go first and furthest in the goal of saving the climate would now be an end. People could no longer afford to drive cars. And now there would be order again, and already in energy policy. Nuclear power would be planned and the expansion of wind power slowed down.
And it was not just the right-wing parties that wanted to rethink. Even the large Social Democrats – the dominant party on the left – said they were on board with the new right-wing politics. And the fact is that during the three years that the right-wing held government power in Sweden (2022-25), the Social Democrats have often supported the proposals that have come from the government to the Parliament. When the government parties have submitted proposals to Parliament that have entailed stricter migration and a more repressive criminal policy, the Social Democrats have regularly voted yes.
Nevertheless, the Social Democrats say that they want to form a left-wing government after the 2026 election. And they will do this with their small alliance parties on the left. Here, the right-wing parties have been able to claim that it does not matter that the Social Democrats have adapted to changed ideals and accepted a more conservative policy in several areas. The Social Democrats need two, perhaps three other small parties to be able to put together a majority. And these are all parties that are still alive in the strongly progressive thinking that has characterized Sweden for so long.
And this was confirmed now when the Green Party had its congress. Now it was stated that the party does not want to see any new nuclear power, that they want to increase immigration, that they want to ease the tougher criminal policy and that they want to raise fuel prices again because Sweden is going to save the climate.
The announcement was a nightmare for the Social Democratic party leader Magdalena Andersson. She knows that the government side will point out the division that exists within the left bloc. She also knows that the left side lost the election because of the very issues where the Green Party wants to maintain its progressive agenda.
The Swedish Social Democrats have stuck to the conservative trend that exists in Sweden. But what does it matter when their alliance partner the Green Party wants to go back to what applied before 2022?