SwedeInternational

The scandal surrounding parliament member Jamal El Haj has officially left the Social Democratic party one vote down. Party leader Magdalena Andersson then met nearly universal critique when she suggested a popular YouTuber was perhaps being bankrolled by dodgy actors. The two events have made people wonder what is going on in Sweden’s biggest party.

Two too much

Two events preceded El Haj’s fall. Last week, Aftonbladet reported that in 2017, El Haj called the Swedish Migration Agency. In his call, he pled for a favorable immigration decision for an imam who was seeking permanent resident status. In so doing, El Haj inappropriately used his position to try to influence a government agency in its work. It was later revealed that the Social Democratic party knew about this at the time but didn’t act on it.

El Haj was already living dangerously. In 2023, El Haj spoke at a conference where the event chair had ties to terrorist organization Hamas. The party expressly asked him not to attend the event, but he went anyway.

Together, these events proved too much for the Social Democratic party. El Haj was asked to leave and he agreed. However, he won’t leave his seat in parliament. This leaves the Social Democratic party one man less as well as in an unusually awkward position. El Haj is the first ever Social Democratic party member to become a parliamentary free radical. (For more on vildingar see this post.)

“I’m just wondering who’s financing him”

Later in a separate interview, party leader Andersson was asked about Russian influence peddling. In her remarks, Andersson implied that a popular, right-leaning YouTuber was perhaps being funded by some questionable sources. Naming someone specifically in this context, while offering no proof, was, for many, over the line. Almost Trumpian. Her innuendo was met with critique from both right and left commentators.

The Social Democratic party has lately fallen from its previously high approval ratings. These gaffes won’t help.

Wind parks meet similar challenges

Solar energy provides less than 2% of Sweden’s total power production. There are hopes that it can contribute much more. It’s turning out, though, that solar farms and wind parks hit similar opposition. A national interest is sometimes at stake (see this post), and at other times it’s a land use issue. Either way, another effort for producing renewable energy is running into more problems than was once hoped.  

In Sweden, the Land and Environment court has declared that solar farms cannot be installed on useable farmland. Food production and food self-sufficiency are of a higher national interest. When a landowner and farmer believe a solar farm would be more practical and profitable, conflicts and court cases arise. In 2022, SVT reports, 24 requests to install a solar farm were turned down on national interest grounds in Skåne. In Halland, 65 proposed solar farms got a no.

protected frogs

Even if the solar farm is approved, another issue is the transmission cables needed to connect the panels to the grid. These cables need to run over land, which can impact the environment negatively. This is the argument landowners over a five mile stretch in southern Sweden are presenting in opposition to the proposal from electric company Eon. Among other concerns, they argue, the presence of several species of protected frogs in the area demands extra consideration. According to Ystads Allehanda, it will be up to the Swedish Energy Markets Inspectorate to decide.

Increasing electrification needs make even a small solar contribution a welcome addition to the grid.  Optimists believe that in the future, solar farms could provide up to 10% of Sweden’s energy needs, particularly as material costs fall.

The sunlight itself is free. But harnessing it comes with a cost that not everyone is willing to pay.  

Like tremblors after an earthquake, reverberations from the ransomware attack on Finnish Tietoevry last week were felt hard in Sweden. Tietoevry supplies administrative systems to businesses, agencies and authorities all over the world. Consumers in Sweden felt it at the movies when they couldn’t buy tickets, candy or even popcorn in Svenska Film’s Tietoevry payment system. Rusta, Systembolaget, Stadium, and Granngården are just some of the affected companies.

Communities under siege

Several local municipalities were laid low as well. Systems in Vellinge and Bjuv municipalities, as well as in Västerbotten, Sörmland, Blekinge and Uppsala Regions were impaired. All of Sweden’s 139 service centers were impacted. Swedavia, the state agency that runs Sweden’s major airports, has also gone public saying their internal financial system has operational difficulties. Last, but not least, Sweden’s parliament was affected, although they have not specified exactly how. As Sweden’s previous defense minister Peter Hultqvist said, “It’s big.“

The real number of affected agencies and companies will perhaps never be known. Being hacked is often seen as bad for business. If a company’s data is held for ransom, the company is put under two kinds of pressure – to pay and not to pay. Many companies just want to get it over with and restart business as usual. But paying the perpetrator, thereby encouraging more attacks, is also bad for business and shameful to boot – if it becomes known. For these reasons, companies don’t always report that they have been hacked. Not reporting an infiltration, however, decreases the chances that the hacker is apprehended.

Russian pompoms

In this case, many believe the hacker is known. Akira is the main character in a Japanese cyberpunk manga film of the same name. It is also the name of the hacker company suspected of being behind the Tietoevry attack. The Russian state is believed to be their main supporter and cheerleading section.

Russia could be playing the long game. By disrupting everyday services, from buying movie tickets to payroll processing, basic trust in society is eroded. When things don’t work as expected, uncertainty is created. In the end, the danger is that people may think that nothing – pluralist democracies included – can be counted on, and that complicated reality is too much work. Thinking in this way plays right into the hands of populist and autocratic regimes who promise to take care of things.

Just like after earthquakes, much rebuilding will be needed after this attack.

Sweden’s CEOs appear to be rather skeptical of AI in the workplace, compared to their international colleagues. PwC’s 27^th Annual Global CEO Survey found that only 18% of surveyed Swedish CEOs have integrated AI into their business operations. Globally, 32% of CEOs indicated that AI was in some manner a part of their daily processes.

Another question where Sweden showed a significant diversion regarded whether or not employees would need to develop new skills to meet the AI challenge. In Sweden, less than 50% agreed with that statement. Globally, 70% of respondents answered in the affirmative.

Other questions in the survey showed similar discrepancies between Swedish and global CEOs. For example, 56% of Swedish CEOs believe that AI will increase workplace efficiency. That number is 64% globally. 26% of Swedish CEOs believe AI will lead to increased profitability. That number is 41% globally. And 40% of Swedish CEOs believe AI will raise the quality of their products and services in the next year. 60% of the total number of CEOs answered yes to that question.

In its press release, PWC speculates that the reason for hesitation is that the focus in Sweden is more on AI’s risks than on its possibilities. Another reason, PWC writes, may be the lack of clear guidelines on how to use AI in a responsible manner.

Nervous?

AI’s disruption of standard models of business practice has made CEOs nervous the world over. 45% believed their business would not survive the next ten years if they continued on their current path. The megatrends of AI and climate change, PWC writes, makes business reinvention imperative.

help or hindrance?

In a press release last week, the government and the Sweden Democrats (SD) announced another inquiry. This time, the government wants to find out how mother tongue language instruction helps or hinders students. More specifically, they want to find out how the weekly hour of home language instruction affects students’ integration into Swedish society. They also will look at these students’ Swedish language acquisition, and their overall study success.

The rules surrounding home language instruction have changed since its inception in the 1970s. From first being voluntary, it is now a right. School children in Sweden have a right to instruction in the language the child speaks at home for one hour a week, outside of regular school hours.

Due partly to questions regarding the subject’s validity, the regulations around home language have increased as well. The syllabus for home language instruction is found in the National Agency for Education’s curriculum. The subject has a list of knowledge requirements and grading criteria like any other subject. In addition, there is an explicit teacher credential with grade specification for just mother tongue language teachers.

The increased regulation has coincided with the number of investigations into the subject. In its press release, the government states that there is a dearth of information about possible effects of home language classes. There have however, been a number of investigations in the past. The latest was in 2019, which found that students who took mother tongue classes achieved better academic results that those who were eligible for classes but didn’t sign up for them.

For whatever reasons, this government may find other results.

When do your politics decide your salary?

A formal complaint has been lodged against the Kristersson government with the parliamentary Committee on the Constitution (konstitutionsutskottet, KU).  The complaint regards a salary directive that allows bigger raises for civil servants who specifically work to implement policies in the Tidö agreement. To opposition parties, the directive disrupts and corrupts the non-political nature of civil servant government work.

The line between politicians and bureaucrats is often muddy. In 2018, a petition was signed by many civil servants working in the Swedish foreign ministry. The signees questioned their obligation to serve their employer, the government, if it did not work to further similar values to their own. Cases of civil servants acting on personal political opinions have been documented in other government departments as well as government services. The nurse who refused to carry out abortions had to quit when she refused to perform work that was part of the job description.

Systembolaget is the state-owned alcohol monopoly and is one of several hybrid government businesses. Their agreement on setting local employees’ salaries was signed last May. Regarding local salaries, one deciding factor is to what degree the employee meets “the goals for the enterprise.” Disagreeing with an employer’s goal, the government’s goal in this case, can apparently affect your salary even selling beer. 

Making careers dependent on how much one works to execute a business vision is nothing new in the corporate world. It’s nothing particularly new in the government world either. Connecting it to a wage increase, particularly in these difficult economic times, is an animal of slightly different color. We’ll see what conclusion the constitution committee comes to.

The standard definition of a recession is two quarters of declining GDP, gross domestic product. By that measure, Sweden is in a recession. Sweden’s GDP in the third quarter of 2023 was 0.3% lower than the previous quarter, which in turn was 0.8% lower than the quarter before. Sweden’s GDP (bruttonationalprodukten) is expected to sink 0.4% even next year, according to Swedbank.

It’s complicated, but as a general rule there is a correlation between GDP and inflation. Sweden’s central bank has been working to bring down inflation all year. To do that, Sweden’s spending needed to come down. Raising interest rates – making money more expensive by making loans more expensive – was the chosen method. It looks to have succeeded.

But not without pain. Raising rates makes business expansion difficult and can even cause contraction, as the new GDP numbers indicate. It is largely the same for governments, who find they too must contract despite an often increasing need for social services. A poor economic outlook means that unemployment rises, as it has done in Sweden for the last several months. Economists note that the Swedish central bank is likely to even raise interest rates again – just to make sure the anti-spending message gets across.

In good news, however, inflation is expected to hover around a more normal 2% by the end of next year. In conjunction with that happy trend, even interest rates will come down. The consensus is that with a more normal interest rate, business spending can pick up, leading to new hires and a better GDP. There are certain to be bumps in the road, but a recession won’t last forever.