PM’s briefing documents left in toilet, Left Party MPs to stay on as independents, and other news from Sweden on Monday.
PM’s briefing documents left in toilet, Left Party MPs to stay on as independents, and other news from Sweden on Monday.
PM’s briefing documents left in toilet, Left Party MPs to stay on as independents, and other news from Sweden on Monday.
PM’s briefing documents left in toilet at Stockholm airport
A folder containing classified information was left in a toilet at Stockholm Arlanda airport by a government official on the way to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s meeting with Turkey’s President Erdogan in 2022, the Dagens Nyheter newspaper has reported.
The file was found by a cleaner at the airport. A spokesperson for Sweden’s government offices confirmed the breach, but said that the documents were not considered sufficiently sensitive to report the event to Sweden’s security police Säpo.
According to the spokesman, the file did not include security-classified information, but did include contents covered by “secrecy”, which is a broader, less-stringent classification.
The file was a copy of the background briefing documents provided to the Prime Minister, containing talking points and important facts.
Sweden’s former national security advisor, Henrik Landerholm, is currently on trial for leaving classified documents at a conference hotel in 2023.
Swedish vocabulary: en pärm – a folder
Left Party MPs to stay on as independents
Daniel Riazat and Lorena Delgado Varas, the two MPs threatened with ejection from the Left Party are leaving the party to serve in parliament as independents, the two said at a press conference on Saturday.
In the press conference the two accused the party’s leader Nooshi Dadgostar of splitting the party and of sacrificing its policies to act as a “doormat” for the Social Democrats.
“We are going to continue organising. There is going to be a political alternative, but we don’t know in what form,” Riazat said.
Swedish vocabulary: att organisera – to organise
Swedish pension giant ‘has invested billions’ in companies complicit with Gaza attack
Sweden’s AP pension funds have invested billions of kronor in shares of companies accused by the UN of breaking international human rights law in Gaza, the public broadcaster SVT has reported.
Four of the AP funds are invested in Rolls Royce, which makes engines for Israeli tanks. Several of the AP funds are invested in Palantir, which makes software for AI warfare, with the AP7 fund holding 4.8 billion in the company in the middle of August.
“We need more evidence to act. It is a problem to get verifiable information from war zones,” the pension fund’s sustainability head Charlotta Dawidowski Sydstrand, told the TT newswire.
Swedish vocabulary: bevis – evidence
Swedish business lobby calls for tax cuts, unions against
The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise has backed government plans to bring in tax cuts in the 2026 budget, saying businesses and families need help with their finances.
“Companies and households have had a tricky time for a while, so the government needs to put some money their way,” Sven-Olov Daunfeldt, the chief economist at the confederation told the TT newswire.
The Swedish Trade Union Confederation, however, criticised the plans.
“Last time, the rich got more and it didn’t solve anything. Don’t repeat it!” said Johan Lindholm.
Next week the government will meet at the prime minister’s country house, Harpsund, to thrash out the details of the budget.
Confederation of Swedish industry is calling for the government to be expansive with 65 billion kronor of unfinanced spending.
Swedish vocabulary: att satsa – to invest/deploy money towards
Trump dominates in Swedish media
US President Donald Trump has over the past year been mentioned in the Swedish media more than twice as often as all the Swedish party leaders put together, according to an analysis ordered by TT from the media analysis company Retriever.
Between January 1st and July 31st, Trump was mentioned 125,000 times in Swedish news articles, compared to just 25,000 articles on Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
Swedish vocabulary: omskriven – written about