AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – The contrasting tones of two progressive Swedish leaders reflect a broader rift within Europe’s centre-left, between parties tightening migration policies to win back voters’ trust and those warning against betraying core values.
“We are way stricter on migration and on crime than we were before,” said Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Swedish Social Democrats and prime minister from 2021 to 2022, speaking at the yearly congress of the Party of European Socialists (PES), which bundles Europe’s centre-left parties.
The day before, a fellow Swede, Stefan Löfven was overwhelmingly re-elected president of the PES – without mentioning migration once in his pitch to the roughly 1,000 progressives gathered in Amsterdam for the congress.
“Progress does not stop at national or European borders,” he said in his speech, staying vague on the topic. “The challenges we face cross frontiers, and so must our solutions.”
Löfven was initially elected to lead PES in late 2022, only shortly after having left the office of prime minister and passing the social democratic mantle to his finance minister at the time, Andersson.
Löfven and Andersson’s different tones echo a broader split inside Europe’s centre-left.
Socialists are struggling across the bloc, as far-right forces campaigning on migration issues are gaining ground on progressives. Only three social democratic leaders currently sit at the EU’s highest table. Local Dutch progressive leader and former EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans is seeing his own party trail right-wing rivals ahead of the national election later this month.
Europe’s socialists still seem to be searching for an answer. At the PES congress in Amsterdam, none of the 14 adopted resolutions were dedicated solely to the hot-button topic of migration.
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Andersson: “That was wrong”
During Löfven’s tenure as Swedish PM from 2014 to 2022, the country was noted for its humanitarian approach to migration – especially in 2015, when the country received almost 150,000 asylum seekers.
Since taking over, Andersson has broken with Löfven’s legacy, particularly on migration.
“We had one of the most generous asylum systems in Europe, and that was wrong,” she told Euractiv, while also putting the blame on migration policies that Löfven inherited when taking office in 2014. “We need to focus again on jobs, welfare and safety for families.”
Löfven, on the other hand, frames the issue differently. “Refugees have a universal right to seek refuge,” he told Euractiv after his re-election. “Europe’s demography is not good. We can’t say ‘we don’t want you’ now, and then later ask, ‘where are the workers to keep our welfare system running?’”
“Today in Europe, it sounds like migration per se is a problem – and that’s wrong”
Conscience and survival
Andersson has struck a tougher tone on key issues – one similar to that of neighbouring Denmark’s social democratic prime minister Mette Frederiksen. Frederiksen has upset other European progressives by teaming up with right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to push for stronger migration policies at EU level.
Frederiksen did not attend the PES congress. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, representing a more liberal wing of the PES, was the only EU head of government to take part.
Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related shootings – something the current centre-right government links to the country’s historically liberal migration policy.
Andersson appears to share that view. “We need to have a strict migration policy in Sweden – we have a lot of shootings,” she said on stage in her address to the congress.
Löfven rejected calls for socialists to refocus their message. “We have to stand up for our values – that everybody has equal value,” he said.
Still, he denied suggestions that he and Andersson differ on key policies. “We have the same views on these issues,” he said. “She was the finance minister, I was the prime minister. We worked together.”
Andersson’s change of tone is seemingly well-received in the Swedish electorate, with polls suggesting that social democrats would receive around 35 % of the votes in a national election, gaining on the current government.
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