Today in Sweden: a roundup of the news on Friday
Inquiry calls for better access to digital payments, electricity support 'worsened inflation', Turkey votes to ratify Finland's Nato membership, and Sweden's government launches 'census'. Here's the some of the day's news from Sweden.
Inquiry calls for action on "1m adults" without access to digital payments
A government inquiry into digital payments has called for "more people to get access to digital payments", with actions required to help the roughly 1m adults who, because they do not have a personal number, or because of age or disability, do not have access to digital payment systems.
Anna Kinberg-Batra, the former Moderate Party leader tasked with leading the inquiry, has called for the government to set up its own digital identity system which might make it easier for those currently excluded from systems like Swish, BankID, and Klarna.
Swedish vocabulary: att få tillgång – to get access
Government's electricity price compensation 'worsened inflation': central bank chief
The decision of Sweden's government to pay out 55 billion kronor to electricity consumers in compensation for high prices made inflation worse over the last month, Erik Thedéen, director of Sweden's Riksbank central bank, has told state broadcaster SVT in an interview.
"Yes, if they hadn't done that, inflation would have been a little lower," he said, adding that the bank would also have been able to keep interest rates a little lower without the so-called elstöd package.
"We have chosen not to criticise this. It was anyway the case this was hitting certain households extremely hard, so it was something we decided not to criticise at that point."
Swedish vocab: utbetalningar – payouts
Finland's Nato states now ratified by all 30 member states, leaving Sweden alone
Turkey on Thursday became the final Nato nation to ratify Finland's membership of the US-led defence alliance in the
wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Lawmakers unanimously backed the Nordic country's accession two weeks after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly blessed the bid.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the ratification, saying on Twitter it would "make the whole Nato family stronger and safer."
Turkey's approval leaves Finland -- which has a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) border with Russia -- with only a few technical steps before it becomes the 31st member of the world's most powerful military bloc.
Officials expect the process to be completed as early as next week. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto thanked Nato's member states for "their trust and support."
"Finland will be a strong and capable ally, committed to the security of the alliance," he said in a statement released on Twitter.
Finland and its neighbour Sweden ended decades of military nonalignment and decided to join Nato last May.
Sweden launches census plan: 'We have lost control of who lives in our country'
Sweden's government, together with the far-right Sweden Democrats, have announced plans for what they claim will be first national census in more than 30 years, with officials potentially checking up on apartments in 'high risk areas'.
Under the plan, announced in a press release on Thursday, the Swedish Tax Agency is being given an addition 500 million kronor to attempt to get a better grasp of how many people are living in Sweden and to propose additional measures that can be taken to improve Sweden’s population register by September.
Sweden’s finance minister, Elisabeth Svantesson, said at a press conference that the Tax Agency would not be sending out teams to check up on every single address, meaning planned actions fall short of what many would classify as a census.
“Quite a lot of doors are going to end up getting knocked on, but we can’t do that everywhere. It’s not an effective use of taxpayer’s money,” she said. “A lot of different tools are going to be needed and we are going to give them to the Tax Agency. If they need more tools, they can come back to us and we’ll give them to them.”
Sweden held its last official census in 1990, with a questionnaire sent out to every address in the country. Since then, it has used a registration-based system to monitor the population.
The opposition Social Democrats said that, despite, the headline, the announcement in reality showed that the parties had shelved the idea of holding a new census.
“There is nothing to do but welcome the Sweden Democrats and the government to reality and it is good that they have abandoned their fantasies about an enormously cost and ineffective census,” Niklas Karlsson, the Social Democrat chair of the parliament’s Committee on Taxation told The Local in a written statement.
Swedish vocabulary: fölräkning – census
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Inquiry calls for action on "1m adults" without access to digital payments
A government inquiry into digital payments has called for "more people to get access to digital payments", with actions required to help the roughly 1m adults who, because they do not have a personal number, or because of age or disability, do not have access to digital payment systems.
Anna Kinberg-Batra, the former Moderate Party leader tasked with leading the inquiry, has called for the government to set up its own digital identity system which might make it easier for those currently excluded from systems like Swish, BankID, and Klarna.
Swedish vocabulary: att få tillgång – to get access
Government's electricity price compensation 'worsened inflation': central bank chief
The decision of Sweden's government to pay out 55 billion kronor to electricity consumers in compensation for high prices made inflation worse over the last month, Erik Thedéen, director of Sweden's Riksbank central bank, has told state broadcaster SVT in an interview.
"Yes, if they hadn't done that, inflation would have been a little lower," he said, adding that the bank would also have been able to keep interest rates a little lower without the so-called elstöd package.
"We have chosen not to criticise this. It was anyway the case this was hitting certain households extremely hard, so it was something we decided not to criticise at that point."
Swedish vocab: utbetalningar – payouts
Finland's Nato states now ratified by all 30 member states, leaving Sweden alone
Turkey on Thursday became the final Nato nation to ratify Finland's membership of the US-led defence alliance in the
wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Lawmakers unanimously backed the Nordic country's accession two weeks after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly blessed the bid.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the ratification, saying on Twitter it would "make the whole Nato family stronger and safer."
Turkey's approval leaves Finland -- which has a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) border with Russia -- with only a few technical steps before it becomes the 31st member of the world's most powerful military bloc.
Officials expect the process to be completed as early as next week. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto thanked Nato's member states for "their trust and support."
"Finland will be a strong and capable ally, committed to the security of the alliance," he said in a statement released on Twitter.
Finland and its neighbour Sweden ended decades of military nonalignment and decided to join Nato last May.
Sweden launches census plan: 'We have lost control of who lives in our country'
Sweden's government, together with the far-right Sweden Democrats, have announced plans for what they claim will be first national census in more than 30 years, with officials potentially checking up on apartments in 'high risk areas'.
Under the plan, announced in a press release on Thursday, the Swedish Tax Agency is being given an addition 500 million kronor to attempt to get a better grasp of how many people are living in Sweden and to propose additional measures that can be taken to improve Sweden’s population register by September.
Sweden’s finance minister, Elisabeth Svantesson, said at a press conference that the Tax Agency would not be sending out teams to check up on every single address, meaning planned actions fall short of what many would classify as a census.
“Quite a lot of doors are going to end up getting knocked on, but we can’t do that everywhere. It’s not an effective use of taxpayer’s money,” she said. “A lot of different tools are going to be needed and we are going to give them to the Tax Agency. If they need more tools, they can come back to us and we’ll give them to them.”
Sweden held its last official census in 1990, with a questionnaire sent out to every address in the country. Since then, it has used a registration-based system to monitor the population.
The opposition Social Democrats said that, despite, the headline, the announcement in reality showed that the parties had shelved the idea of holding a new census.
“There is nothing to do but welcome the Sweden Democrats and the government to reality and it is good that they have abandoned their fantasies about an enormously cost and ineffective census,” Niklas Karlsson, the Social Democrat chair of the parliament’s Committee on Taxation told The Local in a written statement.
Swedish vocabulary: fölräkning – census
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