The Swedish election results may be a net neutral for Cameron’s EU renegotiation plans

The Swedish election results were a mess. The Social Democrats and two other opposition parties, the Greens and Left, garnered 43.7% of the vote, against 39.1% for the sitting centre-right Coalition. The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats won 13% of the vote, up from 5.7% in 2010. The leader of the Social Democrats as well as two minor centre-right parties have ruled out a grand coalition, meaning that the most likely outcome is a fragile, minority centre-left government.

There’s a lot one can say about the result. Without a doubt, the big story is the rise of the Sweden Democrats. It’s fair to say that Swedish media and politicians are this morning pretty much panicking, at the prospect of SD holding the balance of power – despite an absolutely massive media campaign against the party leading up to the elections. As expected, all seven mainstream parties have declared that they won’t deal with the Sweden Democrats but, with the party now controlling 49 out of 349 seats in the Riksdag, is this sustainable? And will it hurt or help SD in future? The metropolitan elite ganging up on SD hasn’t worked well so far. In several Councils in southern Sweden, SD won around 30% of the vote, which is concerning.

Some UK media has gone with the headline “Cameron has lost a key EU ally”. Others have argued that the leftist shift in Sweden has further undermined Cameron’s prospects for renegotiation. This is not quite telling the full story. As a whole, a centre-left government including the Greens, drawing on support from the Far Left – two parties that up until recently opposed Swedish EU membership – may in fact become more Eurosceptic. Swedish unions, at least on a membership level, are a hotbed for euroscepticism. On the euro, the Left is much more sceptical than the right. Though the euro debate is dead, this matters politically as the less Sweden perceives itself as a “pre-in” (remember, Sweden doesn’t have a legal opt-out from the euro), the more sympathetic it might be to UK objectives to define the EU as a club beyond the euro. Remember, Moderaterna still had people like Carl Bildt who recently said that Sweden should and will join the euro. On issues like the EU budget, democracy and transparency a centre-left government will be just as helpful as the Reindfeldt government.

Still, a centre-left government might be less keen on free trade and dynamic financial markets, though in truth, any Swedish minority government would and will have to work hard to get through an ambitious services directive for example. And by simply belonging to a political family, the willingness to strike deals may be tempered. Also, Reinfeldt and Cameron did get along on a personal level, though that relationship was strained recently (as it became between Anders Borg and George Osborne).

Instead. the significance of the Swedish elections was the fragmentation of the centre, and the rise of an anti-establishment party, that the mainstream still has no convincing answers to. In that sense, Sweden just became a bit more European – and we don’t mean that in a good way in this instance.

If you force 26 EU countries to choose between Berlin and London. 26 will choose Berlin.

The knife in the battle over the next Commission President has just been twisted a little deeper into David Cameron's side.

Both Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt and Dutch PM Mark Rutte today announced that they will not seek to block Jean-Claude Juncker for the top post.

Both countries have huge reservations, (Sweden and Hungary were the only two countries to oppose the idea of Spitzenkandidaten from the get-go), but they apparently don't want to be standing on the wrong side of the fence from Germany.

Speaking in the Dutch Parliament today, Rutte said:

I’m set on [Juncker. He is] in a position to implement important Dutch wishes.

A slight departure, then, from remarks Rutte made previously, that the Spitzenkandidaten process is “not my preference,” and that he wants to initiate a fundamental debate on it “possibly during the Dutch presidency” over the European Council in 2016.

Importantly, Rutte also remarked:

Under no circumstances, will I make agreements over adapting the fiscal rules, or making them more flexible, in order to make the nomination of a candidate possible.

Meanwhile, Reinfeldt told the Swedish Parliament:

If Jean Claude Juncker musters a qualified majority amongst heads of state and governments, and also has the support of the European Parliament, well then, the rules set out in the Lisbon Treaty have been followed and Sweden will also join this majority. 

Though Reinfeldt doesn't actually state how he would act in an outright vote, it probably means he will not vote against Juncker. 

So that only leaves the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, on 'Team Cameron'. Orban said "there is no way" he would vote for Juncker, even before the European Parliamentary election.

Absent changes, Cameron is now a long way off a blocking minority to Juncker in the Council. With Italy trading support for Juncker in exchange for more "flexible" EU fiscal policy, and the Netherlands and Sweden dropping out too, Cameron will lose the vote on Friday. This is the grim reality, even though most EU heads of state are far from convinced about Juncker, and of the Spitzekandidaten process itself.

The top line is that if you pit London against Berlin, and ask other EU member states to choose between them, they won't choose London.

So the trick is to avoid that choice - which in this case was rather difficult. For reasons we've explained numerous times, the likely consequence of repeatedly forcing this choice is that the UK will leave the EU. That most certainly isn't in Berlin's interest either - or Stockholm's, or the Hague's, or Copenhagen's, or Warsaw's...