The elections in Sweden to the European Parliament marked the first electoral setback for the Swedish populist party with far-right roots that grabbed more than 13 per cent of the votes but came fourth, according to preliminary figures Monday. That made Sweden one of the few countries in Europe where the far-right is in retreat.
The Sweden Democrats — the Scandinavian country’s second largest group in the Swedish parliament — grabbed 13.2 per cent of the votes, down 2.2 per cent, and would keep their three seats in the EP assembly, according to preliminary figures.
They came in behind the opposition Social Democrats, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s conservatives Moderates and the Greens, which made some of the largest gains Sunday in the EU election for Sweden’s 21 seats. The Social Democrats grabbed nearly one-fourth of the votes and would get five seats while the Moderates would get four and the Greens three. The poor showing by the Sweden Democrats was “the election night’s greatest sensation,” said Mats Knutson, the political analyst with Swedish broadcaster SVT.
He said the reasons for the poor showing could be that the party faced a storm of criticism after a television station had alleged that it had been operating fake social media accounts, badmouthing political opponents and allies, spreading doctored videos and posting racist remarks. Knutson also noted that the migration issue wasn’t particularly important to voters this time.
Christine Nissen, an analyst with the Copenhagen-based think tank Europa, said that migration wasn’t the top issue in northern Europe in contrast to southern Europe where “issues such as migration are important for the voters there.”
The Sweden Democrats, who today support membership in the 27-member bloc, have toned down their rhetoric and expelled openly racist members. Since then, they have grown from a marginal movement with less than 2 per cent support to becoming the country’s second-biggest party.
In the 2022 parliament elections, the Sweden Democrats, who won nearly 21 per cent support — up from 17.5 per cent four years ago — gained on the rising fears of crime in largely immigrant neighbourhoods in segregated districts that are home to large numbers of migrants who have failed to integrate into Swedish society.
The party which maintains a hard line on immigration, supports Sweden’s three-party centre-right government in the 349-member Riksdag, but is not part of it. Kristersson’s government has been moving toward a tougher stance on criminal gangs by increasing prison sentences for gang members and introducing stop-and-frisk zones for police to crack down on crime.
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Poland’s centrist premier Tusk is strengthened by EU election win but populists are at his heels
Warsaw (AP) Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist party clinched its first electoral victory over a right-wing populist party in a decade by taking the most votes in the European Parliament election, official results released Monday showed. Many viewed Tusk’s return to power last year as a rare case of a democratic party prevailing over populist and authoritarian forces. However, while Sunday’s win solidified his position, the results also showed that his lead is small, and that support for the far right is rising.
His Civic Coalition took 37.1 per cent of the votes. The nationalist Law and Justice party, which held power from 2015 until last year and is led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, followed closely with 36.2 per cent, underscoring the continued attraction of its conservative worldview to many Polish voters, despite corruption scandals during its years in power.
Two Law and Justice candidates — Former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his former deputy, Maciej Wasik — won seats in the latest election despite their previous conviction of abuse of power.
They were briefly imprisoned earlier this year before being pardoned by President Andrzej Duda, who is aligned with the conservative party. Meanwhile, Confederation, a far-right party with a vocal anti-Ukraine stance, had its best result ever, coming third with 12.1 per cent — in line with an EU-wide surge of support for nationalist, anti-EU parties.
One of the Confederation candidates who won a seat is Grzegorz Braun, a controversial politician who extinguished candles on a menorah that were lit for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah in the halls of the Polish parliament last December.
Tusk, who first served as prime minister from 2007-14 and then went on to hold a top EU leadership position, returned to power in Warsaw in December after a coalition of three parties collectively won a national election last fall.
However, Law and Justice still won more votes than any other party in that election. Sunday marked the first time in many years that it did not win the most votes.
Tusk’s strong showing Sunday came at the expense of his two coalition partners, the Left and the more conservative Third Way, which had poor showings.