The Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson has been elected Prime Minister of Sweden for the second time within a few days. As with a first vote last Wednesday, she also received the necessary support in a parliamentary vote on Monday.
After the vote, the previous finance minister will be the first woman to head a government in the Scandinavian EU country. Until the change of government at King Carl XVI. Gustaf is officially completed, the resigned Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven remains in office.
Andersson was initially elected on Wednesday morning, but she resigned on the same day. The trigger for the surprising move was that the Greens, as junior partner of the Social Democrats, had announced in the late afternoon that they would leave the government. The party decided to do this after parliament had not voted for the Red-Green budget, but for an alternative proposal from several opposition parties.
The right-wing populist Sweden Democrats were also involved in this alternative budget proposal for the first time – that was a red rag for the Greens. Their departure later received clear criticism from the President of the Parliament, Andreas Norlén, who is responsible for the search for a government. The turbulence could have been avoided if he had known in advance of the Greens’ reservations on the budget, Norlén said on Thursday when he nominated Andersson for a second parliamentary vote.
The 54-year-old Andersson no longer wants to form a coalition with the Greens, but rather to lead a purely social-democratic minority government. Her predecessor and party friend Stefan Löfven had been the head of a red-green minority government for the past seven years. He had submitted his resignation as head of government on November 10, after he had previously passed the party chairmanship to his long-term finance minister. With this, he wants to ensure that Andersson can raise his profile in the months leading up to the next parliamentary election in September 2022.