Not even the murder of pro-euro foreign minister Anna Lindh a few days before the referendum produced a large enough number of sympathy yes votes for integrating Sweden more fully into the European Monetary Union (EMU).

Most employers and the big-business media, as well as a majority of members of parliament, campaigned for a yes vote. Sweden was “gripped by a political campaign whose scale and one-sidedness is without precedent in this Nordic country,” said the British Financial Times.

A small minority of employers and bourgeois politicians did campaign for a no vote. Stockholm had initially been reluctant to join the European Union (EU), and, together with the governments of Denmark and the United Kingdom, refused to adopt its common currency, thus keeping one door open to more collaboration with Washington. “Germany and France have big problems,” noted one Swedish capitalist after the vote, referring to the leading powers in the EU. “Are we going to suffer for that?”

As the euro gained strength vis-a-vis the dollar, the rulers in Stockholm began to shift their position. A congress of the Social Democratic Party, the dominant political force in Swedish politics for the last 70 years, adopted a position in favor of the euro in 2000.  
 
End of Cold War weakened Stockholm
Half of the members of the Social Democratic Party, however, voted against the euro, as did 65 percent of members of the union federation LO, traditionally dominated by the Social Democrats.

“The end of the ‘Cold War’ has affected Swedish imperialism,” explained Anita Östling, speaking for the Communist League at a Militant Labor Forum in Gothenburg September 20. “Before that, Swedish imperialism could maneuver between the stronger imperialist countries and the workers states in eastern Europe, presenting an image of itself as ‘neutral.’ This is no longer possible. Besides, there are no suitors offering collaboration that will benefit the Swedish rulers. This makes Swedish imperialism weaker than ever.”

Östling described how the “weapons inspectors,” Stockholm’s preferred method of subjugating and controlling Iraq and its oil riches, had been run over as Washington and London went to war against Baghdad. Then, as Prime Minister Göran Persson was most intensively campaigning for Sweden to join the euro, Berlin and Paris declared they would not abide by the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, an agreement among EMU members to limit inflation and budget deficits in order to maintain the euro as a stable currency.

“Another effect of the end of the Cold War, as well as the initial stages of economic depression, is the weakening of social democracy,” added Östling. “We did not see the apparatus of the Social Democratic Party enter work places like a locomotive to convince workers how to vote. That monolith too is weaker.”

“The labor movement was split and Social Democratic leader Göran Persson failed to lead it,” complained Lars Lejonborg, leader of the People’s Party Liberals. He blamed the no vote victory on “myths promoted by the Social Democrats that ‘Sweden is best,’ ‘we have nothing to learn from others,’ ‘we are best on our own.’” Other bourgeois party leaders like Alf Svensson of the Christian Democrats and Bo Lundgren of the Moderate Rally conservative party proposed that the Social Democratic government end its collaboration with the Left Party and Green Party environmentalists, who had campaigned for a no vote, in order to work more closely with other bourgeois political forces.  
 
Employers demand compensation
Immediately after the referendum, representatives of employers’ organization and businessmen demanded compensation for the weaker competitive position they said they would face because of the no vote. Jakob Wallenberg, of the dominant Wallenberg family, hoped that the “yes side” would continue to work together “to make Sweden more competitive. That means more education, higher productivity in industry, and increased incentives for private ownership.”

In his “Declaration of Government” on September 16, given by the prime minister at the traditional opening of parliament in the fall, Göran Persson promised to adopt “forceful actions that will strengthen Swedish companies, trade and growth.” He said he would revise tax laws to the benefit of big business and offered “a broad collaboration” to opposition parties, trade unions, and employers.

Anders Jonsson, columnist in the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, cautioned the prime minister against making promises in his declaration to “maintain resources for education and health care. The citizens can read almost every day about municipal governments [in charge of health care] facing big deficits and schools that must cut budgets. Reality across the country seems to correspond poorly to what is being said from the rostrum of parliament.”  
 
Reactions by imperialist rivals
The result of the referendum on the euro is but one sign of increased difficulties for the European Union as it enters its first recession since the adoption of the common currency for 12 of its 15 members. Berlin, Paris, and Rome, with the three largest economies in the EU, are not complying with the budget rules initiated by the rulers in Germany and France in 1997, thus shifting their economic problems onto their smaller rivals. This drew complaints from representatives of smaller capitalist powers at the meeting of EU finance ministers in Stresa, Italy, on September 13-14. With the German and French rulers projecting a third and fourth consecutive year of budget deficits respectively larger than the 3 percent limit under EU rules, “who can you trust in the future development of Europe?” said the governor of the Dutch central bank.

With a planned expansion bringing in 10 new members next year, Europe, writes Alan Cowell in the New York Times, “could soon be perceived as falling into three castes,” with a majority of the new members in eastern Europe having to “make wrenching economic adjustments” to comply with the demands in the Growth and Stability Pact; the three countries still outside the common currency; and the 12 nations presently using the euro, led by Germany and France.

This development was welcomed by the New York Post on September 18. An editorial in the conservative daily said the no vote in Sweden would “help slow the evolution of the European Union from a free-trade pact into a single French-dominated European superstate, designed to challenge American power and protect European statism,” which is where “Europe’s Francophile elites are bent on taking the E.U.” From the point of view of the editors of the Post, “anything that upsets the Franco-German agenda of creating a Europe run for the benefit of Paris and Berlin—and to America’s detriment—is a positive development.”  
 
 
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