‘Sweden is back’: Magdalena Andersson has big plans for Europe 

STOCKHOLM — After four years in opposition, Sweden’s former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson is about to retake power — and she aims to use it to fortify Europe’s place in an unstable world. 

Andersson is in the middle of coalition talks as she prepares for a second stint as prime minister at the head of a left-leaning government, after winning a tight election against the right and far-right earlier this month. 

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO conducted on election day, the Social Democrat leader set out her mission to refocus Swedish foreign policy — and to give the EU more muscle. 

“We need a strong European Union in the world we live in today,” she told POLITICO. “With Russia still waging war in Ukraine, we have an unpredictable United States, and we have China trying to step forward — we really need the European Union to be strong.”

Sweden has an influential voice in European affairs, with an enviable economic record and numerous successful businesses, including tech successes Klarna and Spotify and manufacturing giants Volvo and Saab. If she is confirmed as prime minister, Andersson will be one of the few voices from the left among the EU’s 27 leaders, alongside Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen and the embattled Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

When it comes to beefing up the EU, Andersson’s priority is to overhaul its decision-making processes, especially at the sometimes quarrelsome European Council leaders’ summits. Andersson was in office at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and remembers the difficult dynamic during sanctions discussions, when Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán threw obstacles in the way of agreements that required unanimous support. 

The “number one” issue for giving the EU a strong voice is whether the bloc’s 27 leaders “can actually agree on things” when they sit “around the table,” she said. “Having a strong Europe — finding unanimity, how important that is for us to be strong — I think that’s the key.”

To that end, Andersson wants to scrap the rule granting a veto right to every EU member country on foreign policy. “I think it should be qualified majority … on foreign policy,” she said, adding that when Ukraine and other countries — such as candidates in the Western Balkans — join the EU, “there will be changes one way or another, and then I think this should be one of the issues discussed at that point in time.”

Raiding Russian assets

One area where EU leaders tried — and famously failed — to get a unanimous agreement was on whether or not to use Russia’s financial assets, lying immobilized in a Brussels depository, to help fund Ukraine’s mounting costs of defending itself. Efforts to secure a deal foundered last year on legal concerns from Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever. 

The debate was revived in recent weeks by a group of countries led by Germany. What does Andersson think should happen to the assets? “Take them, use them,” she said.

For “frugal” Sweden, this is “a better way” than adding to the EU’s multi-year budget, which she wants to limit. As for Belgium’s legal worries over seizing assets from the depository in its jurisdiction, she is blunt: “Solve the legal questions, then.”

Such assertiveness is still new for Sweden, which had been studiously neutral until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian leader Vladimir Putin changed that, and Sweden joined NATO in 2024, a decision that now enjoys wide domestic support.

In the closing days of the election campaign, Ulf Kristersson, the center-right leader and outgoing prime minister, accused Andersson’s left bloc of being an unreliable partner to NATO because two of the four parties in it did not initially support membership. Andersson insists that is wrong. “Both the Left Party and the Green Party have declared clearly: Now we are members of NATO, we should be active and strong members of the alliance,” she said.

The Carney model

Sweden has long been one of the EU’s most passionate advocates for free trade. With U.S. President Donald Trump weaponizing tariffs, Andersson is clear that “trade and technology” have become “part of our security.”  But Trump’s trade war with Canada has not dampened her enthusiasm for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whom she’s known since her days as a finance minister when he was a central banker. 

“He’s doing a great job,” she said. It is clear Andersson supports efforts to forge closer ties between Canada and the EU, and wants Europe to follow Carney’s lead in treating Trump with a firm hand. “Standing up for Europe is something that we should do. I think that’s a good way to handle politicians like Trump,” she said. And Carney’s prescription for “middle powers” to work together chimes with Andersson’s analysis of what the EU must do to be “strong.” 

“For a country like Sweden, with our big export companies, the U.S. is an important partner,” Andersson said. “But also, Swedish companies create a lot of jobs in the U.S. … We need a close and strong relationship with the U.S., but at the same time, we shouldn’t be naive.”

Andersson wants Europe to look beyond its own borders for alliances elsewhere — with the likes of Japan, Australia, Canada and former EU member Britain. “We spend a lot of time trying to solve our internal problems, but for [the] European Union to be strong in the world, I think we have to also work more outside.”

She criticized Kristersson for, in her view, focusing too much on the Baltic region and ignoring “the global south,” where Europe needs allies. “I want my government to be active in the global scene. Sweden is back,” she said.

Cancel Brexit

Andersson also wants closer collaboration with the U.K., which also has a new leader of a center-left government in Andy Burnham. Her message to Brits: “We would prefer you to be part of [the] European Union — Sweden is the country who has lost our closest ally in European Union when you left. No country is as sad and miss[es] you as much as we do.”

Burnham, she believes, has “the potential” to be “a very successful prime minister.” Although she doesn’t know him, she says she is “really looking forward” to meeting him. 

Under Kristersson’s outgoing right-wing government, some British-born, long-term residents living in Sweden were forced to leave. Andersson promised to review the situation.

“This is one of the things we have to look into. I mean, people from Britain have been living here for decades,” she said. “And some of them, they have become senior citizens, and they’re not allowed to stay anymore.” 

Would she like Britain to rejoin the EU? Almost before the question is finished, she shoots back: “Yes. Please. Tomorrow.” She added: “But I know it’s up to you, and you have had your referendum. We respect it, but we miss you.”

Unfinished business

Andersson became Sweden’s first female prime minister in November 2021, but lost power at the election less than a year later, and she clearly feels she has unfinished business. She had to watch from the opposition while Kristersson ran the country for four years with the support and influence of the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats.

This month’s election was a critical test for the country’s appetite for even greater far-right involvement in the government. In his election pitch, Kristersson promised ministerial posts to Sweden Democrats for the first time, if he were re-elected. Andersson sought to make crossing that Rubicon a central question in the campaign. 

She insists restoring the notion of a “firewall” or “cordon sanitaire” — in which mainstream parties promise not to collaborate with the far right — is not undemocratic. 

“How could it be undemocratic? I mean, parties decide who they want to work together with, and people vote for them or they don’t vote for them,” she said. “If you’re clear on how you will act and people vote for you, I mean, that’s how things work. And for the Social Democrats or a party like mine, of course we will never work with a [party] like the Sweden Democrats. The labor movement has always been the largest opponents against right-wing authoritarian, populist parties.”

At times the intense campaign spilled over into violence. The worst moments, she said, were “the occasions when party members campaigning have been attacked, which happened several times — physically attacked.” 

Election day began early for Andersson, voting alongside her husband in a school sports hall. Then she held a rally at party HQ in central Stockholm, where ABBA legend Benny Andersson endorsed her on stage with a rendition of Mamma Mia (the audience sang along, changing the words to “Magdalena”).

For the rest of the day, her red campaign bus toured the outskirts of the city, as she hopped on and off to meet residents and party volunteers in an 11th-hour push to get the vote out. Knocking on doors has been “fantastic,” she said, and it’s obvious how much she enjoys being out on the stump meeting voters. “You always learn something new.”

Andersson said the secret to staying well on a punishing schedule is “good food” and exercise — though her usual biking, hiking and kayaking had to give way to walking and a gym during the campaign. And getting enough rest, of course, is vital. “I always sleep well,” she said. “I’m very good at power napping.”

With the world the way it is, that could be the most useful skill of all.