Sweden's Left Party to Abandon Call to Leave EU, Leader Says
Sweden's Left Party to Abandon Call to Leave EU, Leader Says
(Bloomberg) -- Sweden’s Left Party will put aside its call to leave the European Union to concentrate on improving the bloc and beating back right-wing extremism, its party leader said.
The group, which opposed Sweden joining the EU in the 1994 referendum, will now work with its sister parties across Europe in pulling the bloc to the left, Jonas Sjostedt wrote in a op-ed in publication ETC.
A new vote on Sweden’s EU membership is more and more distant, with a majority in parliament against a new referendum and public support for the union increasing, he said.
“We don’t know how the EU will develop in the future,” he said. “Our strategy must be based on the reality we are in today. We must focus on formulating an alternative to the growing right-wing extremism while rejecting the single-track market liberalism and centralism that dominates the EU. Only the left can handle that task.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Billner in Stockholm at abillner@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonas Bergman at jbergman@bloomberg.net
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