Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström has claimed democracy across the globe is “in decline” and has said the Swedish government will push for an “offensive for democracy” in Europe.
Wallström said the Swedish government would be developing a new programme to hold populist member states to account over what she believes to be a decline in democracy and European values, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.
“To meet the development, we are now starting an offensive for democracy. We want to do this jointly with the Riksdag, and we shall work to ensure that more countries join. The offensive will be noticed in all our foreign policy,” Wallström said.
The minister added that Sweden will make certain demands on member states to make sure they respect both democracy and the rule of law and work on pushing for global nuclear disarmament. She also noted that the Foreign Ministry would continue its feminist foreign policy, as well.
Wallström’s comments come just weeks after she attacked Brexit, calling the decision by British politicians to allow their own people to have a referendum on membership of the European Union unforgivable.
The globalist politician said in January: “I just think that they’ve made such a historical mistake and they’ve really created a problem for all of us… You know what? This is because of bad political leadership since a very long time in the UK I saw with all my years from the European Commission… there was nobody who would defend their [UK] EU membership.”
The foreign policy of the Swedish government under Minister Wallström has not come without its controversies. Conservative Christian Democrats MP Lars Adaktusson noted the fact that Wallström was not welcome in the state of Israel and asked the minister about the relations between the two countries which soured in 2016.
Wallstöm’s attack on populism was followed by Swedish liberal journalist Sofia Nerbrand who reacted to a new programme in Hungary meant to increase the country’s birthrate saying Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán should be “ashamed” of the policy.
“Viktor Orbán’s stated goal is that the Hungarian population should grow larger with the help of white Hungarian babies — not immigrants,” she wrote and added, ” Viktor Orbán should really be ashamed.”
Nerbrand also compared the policy to the Blut und Boden (blood and soil) policy of Nazi Germany and said, “Rhetoric and politics that reward their own people and shut out others should not have a place in today’s Europe.”