The first cabinet of
Ingvar Carlsson ( sv, Regeringen Carlsson I) was the
cabinet of
Sweden between 12 March 1986 and February 1990. The cabinet was formed as a direct consequence of the
assassination of the incumbent prime minister
Olof Palme on 28 February 1986. After which the
Speaker of the Parliament,
Ingemund Bengtsson, in accordance with the
Constitution of Sweden discharged all ministers.
In the course of the first cabinet of Ingvar Carlsson, Sweden — as well as most other western countries in the late 80s — enjoyed a period of economic expansion. The cabinet undertook a reform of the Swedish tax system, which meant that more
income tax
An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Tax ...
went directly to the
municipalities, instead of the state. The reform also meant that a flat
capital gains tax
A capital gains tax (CGT) is the tax on profits realized on the sale of a non-inventory asset. The most common capital gains are realized from the sale of stocks, bonds, precious metals, real estate, and property.
Not all countries impose a c ...
was implemented. During these years Sweden saw two widely publicised political scandals; the
Ebbe Carlsson affair and the
Bofors scandal
The Bofors scandal was a major weapons-contract political scandal that occurred between India and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s, initiated by Indian National Congress politicians and implicating the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, a ...
.
Politics
After the assassination of prime minister Olof Palme on 28 February 1986, the
second cabinet of Palme continued to serve as an
interim cabinet (sv. ''expeditionsregering'') led by
Deputy Prime Minister
A deputy prime minister or vice prime minister is, in some countries, a government minister who can take the position of acting prime minister when the prime minister is temporarily absent. The position is often likened to that of a vice president ...
Ingvar Carlsson until 12 March 1986. The cabinet of Carlsson acceded formally that day, after Carlsson had been elected prime minister by the parliament with 178 votes for and 0 against. 159 members refrained from voting, and 12 were not present.
Apart from the new prime minister, the first cabinet of Carlsson was almost identical with the second cabinet of Palme. However the Minister for
Energy Affairs, also acceded Carlsson's former office as
Minister of the Environment
An environment minister (sometimes minister of the environment or secretary of the environment) is a cabinet position charged with protecting the natural environment and promoting wildlife conservation. The areas associated with the duties of an ...
Foreign Affairs
Between 14 and 17 April 1986 the Prime Minister made a visit to
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...
. The purpose of the visit was to discuss the ongoing border dispute between Sweden and
Soviet in the
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...
. The exact stretch of the border had been a matter of disagreement since the late 1960s. Both parties wanted to draw the border through the middle of the Baltic Sea, however they did not agree on what constituted the middle. They disputed area consisted of 13 500 km².
Sweden wanted to draw the border in a middle, calculated between
Gotland and the
Baltic states, while Soviet wanted to the count from the Swedish mainland. The Soviet proposal would have meant a borderline stretching just east of Gotland.
In January 1988, the
Premier of the Soviet Union
The Premier of the Soviet Union (russian: Глава Правительства СССР) was the head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The office had four different names throughout its existence: Chairman of the ...
,
Nikolai Ryzhkov made an official visit to
Stockholm. Among the issues discussed was the border dispute. It was decided that Sweden were to be given seventy-five percents of the disputed area, while the Soviet Union received the remaining twenty-five percents. Furthermore, the two parties agree on a transition of fishing regulations for the coming twenty years.
In the middle of 1986 a debate concerning whether or not Sweden should implement a complete
trade embargo towards
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
emerged. Denmark and Norway had already announced that they intended to implement an embargo. The
Centre Party, the
Liberal People's Party, the
Social Democratic Youth League, the league of
Social Democratic Women in Sweden and the
Swedish Association of Christian Social Democrats had all announced their support of an embargo.
Import of agricultural products had already been prohibited on 1 January 1986. The Prime Minister, however, wanted to wait on the decision of the
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, an ...
. On 12 March 1987 the decision to implement a complete trade embargo towards South Africa and
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
, starting on 1 July the same year, was taken.
In May 1988, Carlsson traveled to the capitols of several of the member states of the
European Economic Community (EEC). The Prime Minister visited Madrid, Brussels, Bonn and London. The purpose of the visits was to explain Sweden's attitude towards the EEC. Carlsson line was that Sweden was to collaborate with the EEC in all areas except, foreign policy, where Sweden's policy of neutrality hindered it from participate. Therefore, Sweden could not become a member of the EEC.
Early in 1988 the Minister of Foreign Affairs
Sten Andersson visited
Syria,
Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
and
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
. On 6 December 1988 the chairman of the
Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...
visited Sweden on an official
state visit to Stockholm. During his visit, Arafat acknowledge Israel's right to exist and condemned terror as a weapon.
In November the following year Sten Andersson visited the Baltic states, where he declared that the Baltic states were not occupied by the Soviet Union. For this statement Andersson received severe criticism in Sweden. In his memoirs the minister defends his statement, writing that the Baltic states were
annexed which, according to
Public international law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
, is not the same thing as occupation.
The Ebbe Carlsson affair and the Bofors scandal
Several widely publicised political scandals took place during 1987. In March the Indian newspapers the ''
Indian Express
''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split be ...
'' and ''
The Hindu
''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...
'' accused the then Indian
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...
Rajiv Gandhi and several others of receiving
kickbacks
A kickback is a form of negotiated bribery in which a commission is paid to the bribe-taker in exchange for services rendered. Generally speaking, the remuneration (money, goods, or services handed over) is negotiated ahead of time. The kickbac ...
from the Swedish weapons producer
Bofors
AB Bofors ( , , ) is a former Swedish arms manufacturer which today is part of the British arms concern BAE Systems. The name has been associated with the iron industry and artillery manufacturing for more than 350 years.
History
Located ...
for winning a bid to supply India's 155 mm field
howitzer. The scale of the corruption was far worse than any that India had seen before, and directly led to the defeat of Gandhi's ruling
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...
party in the November 1989 general elections. The affair became known as the
Bofors scandal
The Bofors scandal was a major weapons-contract political scandal that occurred between India and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s, initiated by Indian National Congress politicians and implicating the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, a ...
.
During the night between 5 and 6 October
Stig Bergling, a former officer in the
Swedish Security Service
The Swedish Security Service ( sv, Säkerhetspolisen , abbreviated SÄPO ; until 1989 ''Rikspolisstyrelsens säkerhetsavdelning'', abbreviated RPS/Säk) is a Swedish government agency organised under the Ministry of Justice. It operates as a ...
who had been convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, managed to escape while on furlough. After receiving heavy criticism, the Minister of Justice
Sten Wickbom resigned on 19 October. During the year the much troubled police investigation of the assassination of Olof Palme lingered on. Due to failure to present results the Stockholm county administrative chief of police
Hans Holmér was forced to resign.
On 1 June 1988 the
Ebbe Carlsson affair started, when the newspaper
Expressen revealed that the publisher
Ebbe Carlsson had been given access to top secret documents concerning the Palme investigation. The new Minister of Justice
Anna-Greta Leijon, who had authorised Ebbe Carlsson's involvement in the investigation, resigned on 7 June.
Energy and Environment policy
Shortly before Christmas 1985, the Minister of the
Environment and
Energy Affairs Birgitta Dahl, pledged to present a plan to phase out
nuclear power in Sweden by 1995. After the 1986
Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, an expert committee was formed by the government. The committee was to investigate the security of nuclear energy. To form a broad consensus regarding the future of nuclear energy in Sweden, the cabinet invited the other political parties for discussion. On 12 February 1987 the discussions failed. The following day Dahl announced that the government intended to start the phase out between 1990 and 1997. In the beginning of 1987 they presented a
Motion (parliamentary procedure)
In parliamentary procedure, a motion is a formal proposal by a member of a deliberative assembly that the assembly take certain action. Such motions, and the form they take are specified by the deliberate assembly and/or a pre-agreed volume detaili ...
to close the first nuclear reactor sometime in the period 1993–1995 and the second during 1994–1996.
In 1988 the
Moderate Party
The Moderate Party ( sv, Moderata samlingspartiet , ; M), commonly referred to as the Moderates ( ), is a liberal-conservative political party in Sweden. The party generally supports tax cuts, the free market, civil liberties and economic lib ...
proposed a national Carbon dioxide limit. Which meant that nuclear power plants could not be replaced by
fossil fuel power plant
A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station which burns a fossil fuel, such as coal or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, wh ...
s. The same year the cabinet revised their nuclear proposition; now the first reactor was to be closed by 1995, and the second by 1996. The plants where reactors were to be closed were
Barsebäck and
Ringhals. Dahl declared that the decision was "irreversible." But after debates in parliament the
Liberal People's Party and the
Centre Party, together with members of the social democratic party, reverted the decision in 1991.
Social policy
During February 1986 the cabinet held negotiations about with the conservative opposition about
social policy. The Social Democratic Party wanted to raise
child allowances and extend parental allowance. By 28 February the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, and the Liberal People's Party had left the negotiations. The Centre Party later returned to negotiations, and with support from them and the
Left Party the proposition passed. The new law
[Lag (1986:378) om förlängt barnbidrag. aw (1986:378) regarding extended child benefit] meant that child allowance was raised from 400
SEK/month to 485 SEK/month.
General election, 1988
Before the general election in 1988, the three conservative parties agree on a proposal to implement a taxed health care allowance on 15 000 SEK per child and year. Cost of childcare up to the same amount would be deductible in the declaration. In total the proposal would have costed 8 billion Swedish crowns. The social democrats instead wanted to extend parental allowance during a period of three years, from nine to eight months. The Social Democrat's proposal were to cost 5,5 billions. The Social Democratic Party lost three seats in the election. The communistic Left Party gained one seat. The
Green Party passed the
election threshold
The electoral threshold, or election threshold, is the minimum share of the primary vote that a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature. This limit can ...
for the first time, receiving 5.5 percent of the votes and thus twenty seats in parliament. The conservative parties together lost nineteen seats.
Economic policy
Resignation of the cabinet
Labor market debate, 1990
Ministers
Secretaries of State
Bibliography
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Notes
External links
{{Swedish Social Democratic Party
Cabinets of Sweden
1986 establishments in Sweden
1990 disestablishments in Sweden
Cabinets established in 1986
Cabinets disestablished in 1990