De svenska partierna och Lavaldomen

Abstract

The Swedish political parties and the Laval verdict.

The Swedish labour market has been characterised hitherto by collective agreements, by strong trade unions, and by far-reaching rights to take industrial action. At the same time, Sweden has been an Member State of the European Union since 1995. The fundamental basis of the Union is freedom of movement for goods, services, capital, and labour. The question is whether the Swedish labour-market model is threatened by freedom of movement within the EU. The verdict of the European Court of Justice in the Laval case would seem to indicate that it is. This verdict substantially restricted the right of trade unions to take industrial action to force foreign companies employing posted workers in Sweden to pay Swedish wages. The purpose of this article is to describe and explain the positions taken by Swedish political parties on the question of what Swedish legislation ought to follow from the ECJ’s decision in the Laval case. The legislation proposed by the bourgeois government, which the Swedish parliament adopted, involved a virtually total accommodation to the Laval verdict. The red-green opposition did not wish to go as far in accommodating the verdict, but it agreed with the government that EU law had to be implemented. The stance taken by the bourgeois government can be explained in terms of a combination of substantive and strategic motives. It liked the content of the Laval verdict, and it also wished loyally to implement EU law. The red-green opposition, on the other hand, was confronted with cross-pressures. It disliked the content of the verdict, but at the same time wished to be loyal towards the EU. As these parties saw it, the government had gone too far in accommodating the verdict; however, these parties too sought to stay within the bounds of EU law. At bottom, no Swedish party (except the Sweden Democrats, a right-wing populist party) wants to challenge the EU in any serious way.