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SWEDEN
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The capital of Sweden is Stockholm, the country’s area is 410,934 square kms, its population is made up of 8,909,128 inhabitants, the gross domestic product is 264.2 billion Euros. The inflation is 1%, its unemployment rate is 5.6%, the deficit is +0.5%, with a balance in surplus and its National debt is 51.6%. Sweden has got a monarchic institutional form and its constitution is made up of 4 main laws. Its form of Government is a Parliamentary one. The Swedish Parliament has a mono-cameral structure, i.e. it is composed by only one Chamber including 349 members. The Swedish deputies’ madate lasts for 4 years. The Swedish Parliament, elected by a proportional electoral system, provides for a blocking clause fixed at 4%. The present Head of the State is King Karl Gustaf XVI. The Government is responsible towards the Parliament, after the confidence vote of the Parliament, the Prime Minister is appointed by the President of the Parliament. The Prime Minister has the power of appointing and reoking his Ministers and of solving the Parliament, whereas in order to revoke the confidence to the Government the vote of the absolute majority of the deputies is needed; thereby, minority Governments are possible. The main Swedish party is traditionally the Social-Democratic Party, thet has been leading most of the Government coalition since the after-War period. In the last political elections, in September 2002, they get almost the 40% of the votes. At the left of the Social-Democratics, the former Communists and the Greens; the centre-rightist opposition is leaded by the Moderate Party and the Liberal Party; there also are the smaller Christian-Democratic Party and a small Centre Party. The present Swedish Government is a minority one, as it is made upof members of the Workers’ Social-Democratic Party. The Prime Minister is Goran Persson, popular leader of the Scandinavian Social-Democracy, already in office in ’96, elected again in ’98 and in 2002. Sweden is an EU member since 1st January 1995. The adhesion was ratified by a popular referendum, that took place in November ’94. The “YES” get the 52.3% of votes. In September 2004 another referendum decided, in a negative way, about the Swedish adhesion to the only currency. In that case more than the 56% of people voted against the Swedish adhesion. We remind that Swedish referendum campaign also for the dramatic event of the murder of the Minister of Foreign Affair, Anna Lindh, who had been among the mainsupporters of the Swedish adhesion to Euro. 19 seats within the European Parliament are for Sweden after the enlargement, they decreased from the former 22 seats. We have to point out the low affluence to the polls on the European elections on 13th June 2004, about 37%; this provoked a loss for the Social-Democratic Party that just get 5 seats, compared to the 6 of the European election in ’99. They joined the European Socialist Party. While the centre-rightist parties mantained their votes almost unchanged:4 seats went to the Modarates, that joined the Popular Party, 2 seats to the Liberal Party, that joined the group “Democratic and Liberal Alliance”,1 seat for each to the centrist and the Democratic Christians. The anti-European vote was important too: 2 seats went to the extreme left, 1 seat to the Green Party. As well as the “List of June” get a meaningful consent: it gained 3 seats and joined the indipendent group “Democracy”. The “List of June” was built up just for the European elections 2004, with the main political goal of propose a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty in order to support the reasons for saying “NO”. The Swedish member within the European Commission leaded by the Portuguese Barroso is Margot Wallstrom, Vice-President of the Commission and Responsible for the institutional relationships and for the communication strategy.
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