Sweden’s defense budget is increased – despite conflict over the funding | Sweden

Tomorrow, Friday, the defense committee, which includes all parties in the Riksdag, will present its final report. And the troubled world situation, with Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, makes the report red-hot.

Negotiations are ongoing until the very end, but according to the draft that is now available, it is clear that the politicians are pointing to a continued extensive rearmament of the Swedish defence.

NATO’s demand that the defense budget should be 2 percent of GDP, which is reached by Sweden already this year, will not be enough, it is stated. Instead, there is now a staircase in which the defense appropriations continue to be increased until 2030, and according to Expressen’s data, as it looks right now, it is about appropriations of 2.5 percent of GDP.

Great tensions

According to Expressen’s information, there has been a large consensus on the need for continued rearmament, but at the same time the question of how it will all be financed has created great tension.

According to Expressen’s sources, the Social Democrats have mainly pushed adamantly that the rearmament of the defense must be paid for through a tax increase aimed at people with high incomes.

It has been about a special contingency tax, tax on capital income or a combination of both. The main argument has been that ordinary households and welfare – healthcare, school and care – should not suffer from cuts to pay for the expansion. Instead, the richest can be expected to contribute more.

Still on Thursday, shortly before the final report was to be presented, there was great disagreement. Negotiations are ongoing on Thursday afternoon and are expected to continue this evening.

Several sources describe how the governing parties have been stubbornly opposed to discussing financing through higher taxes. From a bourgeois point of view, it is believed that the financing issue must be kept out, and that it is the responsibility of the parties to finance the expansion in their budgets.

If the members of the defense committee do not manage to agree in the last hours before the report is to be presented, S, and possibly a couple of other parties, are expected to demand that a write-up be added about the importance of increased revenue for rearmament.