Another entry on what Brussels ex-people are up to.
Interesting times in Sweden. First there was a change of government, from the long reigning socialists to a centre right coalition – an event rarer than the Nobel committees announcing winners we had ever heard of. Then there was the news that Sweden, which has been a semi detached member of Europe during outgoing premier Göran Persson’s last years, would be returning to the heart of Europe with two well known Brussels people at the top foreign posts. They are Cecilia Malmström MEP, whose unsuccessful “unseat Strasbourg” campaign clearly at least gave her a seat in Stockholm. She becomes Europe minister. And Carl Bildt, a former Swedish PM, well known on the Brussels diplomatic circuit, as former Balkans envoy and prominent European pro-unity speechmaker, writer and, er, thinker. He gets the plum job of foreign minister, and is, in a young government, Sweden’s senior politician in terms of experience and worldliness.
Then – within a week of taking office – the government has already been gripped by scandals. Two ministers have resigned: the minister in charge of culture and therefore television was found not to have paid her TV licence for 16 years. The trade minister resigned because she paid her cleaner under the table.And what about other targets? Carl Bildt is known to have a skeleton in his closet – profitable involvement with the Swedish Lundin oil company, which prospected in Sudan and which various charities have accused of being complicit in Sudanese government ethnic cleansing thousands of people from the oilfield areas. For now, though, they have left him alone. Let sleeping dogs lie perhaps.
