AGAINST THE CURRENT: Following EU elections in which much of Europe shifted towards the right, Sweden chooses a different path

Stockholm, Sweden

For French President Emmanuel Macron, it was very much a night to forget… but that might end up being easier said than done.

As the results of the European Union elections of 9th June trickled in, Mr Macron was facing a sobering reality — that Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) had achieved not just a comfortable increase in their vote share, but had surged upwards with a remarkable ferocity, taking European leaders by surprise, and eclipsing Macron’s allies by pulling in more than double their supporters. With the newly buoyant RN vote share sitting at approximately 32%, the French premier delivered the night’s second political upheaval in rapid succession, dissolving his parliament and calling an election that is certain to be the make-or-break moment of his remaining three years of presidency. This unexpected spin of the political roulette wheel is a gamble just about as risky as they come — for Macron, it is a confident leap of faith, or at least that’s how he’d like it to be seen, aimed squarely at delivering an unequivocal verdict that he hopes will break in his favour. The French public have voiced their discontent en masse in Europe, in a vote that often attracts significant protest via the ballot box; Macron will hope that his spontaneous election will force voters to face up to the stark choice of handing the RN power at home, and that enough of them will decide they’re not ready to swallow that pill just yet.

Mr Macron is calling for ‘clarification’, but most pollsters agree he’s unlikely to get it – the probable outcome being no overall parliamentary majority. That is unless Le Pen manages to bolster enough support (or allies) to deliver a historic shock of gargantuan proportion.

No doubt feeling that putting the question to the public was the only route to quell disquiet and shore up his domestic standing, Macron’s gamble remains an incalculable risk. Certainties are hard to come by in politics, and the French President’s attempt to secure certainty when the odds seem stacked against him is likely to raise eyebrows across the world, whichever way it turns out.

If Macron had spent Sunday night watching the exit polls with increasing amounts of sweat on his brow, he certainly wasn’t the only one. Across Europe the right was on the advance; Germany’s AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) increased its tally from 11% to 14.2% of the electorate, while Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party slumped to 14.6%; Austria’s far-right Freedom Party swept into first place on 25.7%; Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party took 17% of the Dutch vote, landing second behind the Left-Green alliance; in Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy claimed first place with 28.76%; Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party may have taken less of the Hungarian vote than expected, but they still found themselves commanding a comfortable lead with 43.7%.

Within the political echelons of the 27-nation European bloc, conspicuous change was most certainly afoot — this was by no means a sweeping hard-right takeover, but many of Europe’s populists no doubt broke out the champagne on Sunday night. No longer were they the castigated outcasts, shunned to the fringes of the parliamentary system — suddenly, they were finding themselves firmly in the mainstream.

‘The centre is holding’ stated European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, weighing up her chances of securing a second term, following the influx of results. True, the centre-right European People’s Party group claimed the greatest number of seats, but that centre must have been feeling decidedly eroded by the morning.

Against this gradual tide of rightward movement, there were a small-but-significant few states where the forces of public opinion were swaying things in the opposite direction. While the National Rally were claiming headline space round the world, there were significant electoral stories being quietly written across the continent, and going mostly unnoticed beneath the clamour — perhaps most notably in Sweden.

In recent years the Scandinavian nation had found itself, much like many of its continental neighbours, with a hard-right on an undeniable advance. Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats — SD) had risen out a fringe movement founded by Nazi sympathisers to claim the support of more than one-in-five of voters at the 2022 national election, making them the second-largest party. Created in 1988, the SD first found their way into the Swedish parliament in 2010, and have seen support swell on the back of an extensive rebranding that sought to eschew the toxicity of their past and round them into a palatable option for disaffected Swedes. Reducing immigration remains a key objective for the SD, but they’ve long since abandoned their previous ‘Keep Sweden Swedish’ slogan — opting for the more restrained ‘make Sweden safe again’ in recent times — a reference to their hardline stance on violent crime.

The high point for the SD arrived in 2022 when then-Prime Minister Magdelena Andersson resigned following the defeat of her centre-left bloc to current PM Ulf Kristersson and allies, despite Andersson’s Social Democrats gaining votes on the previous election. Kristersson was able to form a government propped up by Sverigedemokraterna, who had enjoyed particular popularity amongst the young, taking 22% of the 18-21 vote, and had been thrust into position as the second-largest party in the Nordic nation.

The gradual expansion of the SD vote, alarming as it was to the left wing in what has typically been viewed as a broadly liberal society, came on the back of increasing dissatisfaction with the traditional political parties amongst many Swedes — with the startling gang-related crime figures of recent years being mooted as a powerful driver.

By late 2023, it had been announced that the armed forces were stepping in to assist police with ‘analysis and logistics’ as they battled to contain waves of shootings and bomb attacks, thought to be conducted by rival gang factions. Upwards of 60 fatal shootings, the highest total ever seen, had been recorded the previous year, on top of dozens of explosions from attempted bombings. The death of 24-year-old Soha Saad, killed at home by a blast believed to have been targeted at a neighbour, sparked an outpouring of national shock and anger, this coming a few years after a 12-year-old girl lost her life to a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting south of Stockholm. The result is a gun-murder rate which sits at around 30 times that of London, per capita.

As the violence of warring gangs continued to spill over and affect the lives of innocent Swedes, the SD positioned themselves to capitalise on a growing feeling of anger and fear amongst many, promising to impose stricter sentences for those found guilty of gang-related crime, and to tackle what some were controversially claiming was one of the main drivers behind the violence: uncontrolled immigration.

While Swedish police had themselves linked the stark increase in violence to poor integration of those moving to the country, a much wider range of unfavourable socioeconomic factors has been offered in explanation, with high unemployment, increasing inequality, and poverty thought to be pushing people towards gangs. Offences linked to narcotics are believed to be a significant catalyst of gun crime.  

Going into this year’s EU elections, polls were suggesting that the SD would continue to have a strong showing, garnering more support than they enjoyed in 2019. The expectation was that Sweden would be following the lead of the bulk of their European neighbours, and would return an emboldened hard-right on election day.

Surprise then, was what greeted the nation, and indeed much of the continent, when the results came through showing a dampening of support for the SD, who were pushed into fourth place, with a reduced vote share — albeit a share that allowed them to retain their three seats. On the night, they were bettered by Socialdemokraterna (S: 24.8%), Moderaterna (M: 17.6%), and Miljöpartiet de Gröna (MP: 13.8%) — who each took a greater share than the 13.2% managed by the SD. Sverigedemokraterna leader Jimmie Åkesson said that he would analyse the result, and reflect on why his party had not grown their support as expected. Jonas Sjöstedt meanwhile, politician with the Left Party, hailed the poll as a ‘left wing election’, explaining that while much of Europe was making a marked shift to the right, ‘Sweden goes to the left’.

For those searching for an explanation for the Scandinavian anomaly (it was a similar story in Finland and Denmark. Norway does not vote in EU elections), a number of possibilities presented themselves. Certainly, the SD cause in Sweden could not have been helped by a touch of controversy — despite the polishing of the party image in recent times, this year’s campaign had been marred by accusations that people within the party had created anonymous social media profiles to use to attack political rivals.

For many Swedish voters however, research conducted in the lead up to the vote suggested that it was policy which would be determining the outcome. In a survey of 25,000 Europeans conducted by the EU Parliament, it was found that environmental concerns, namely climate change, sat at the forefront of the minds of the Swedish electorate. While other countries placed greater importance on healthcare, poverty, and defence (which ranked second for the newest member of NATO), green issues dominated in Sweden, which has long been viewed as a strong leader on the topic.

While Sverigedemokraterna had been able to effectively manoeuvre itself to capitalise on a distinct shift in public opinion on a number of pressing issues, the environment was not one of them. It was consequently dealt a setback at the ballot box, by no means an incapacitating hit, but enough to perhaps put the breaks on their run of buoyancy.

Many politicians across Europe have found themselves looking around and taking stock of the new situation following the vote of June 9th 2024, and in Sweden it was no exception. It just happens that the new situation there is very different to that of so many of their neighbours.