The speaker of Sweden's parliament, Andreas Norlén, has called the group leaders of all parties to an extraordinary meeting this coming Wednesday, after the government-supporting parties won a vote blocking transitional arrangements for the new citizenship law by reneging on the parliament's longstanding pairing rules.
The vote to add transitional rules last Wednesday would have passed, as two former Sweden Democrat independent MPs decided to vote alongside the opposition, but the Sweden Democrats sent two extra MPs that it had agreed to hold back under parliament's tradition of pairing off, or kvittning, so winning the vote.
Both Annika Hirvonen, group parliamentary leader of the Green Party, and Samuel Gonzales Westling, group leader of the Left Party, have told The Local that they consider this a form of cheating, that this means that the pairing off agreement no longer stands, and that the only possible course of action is for the government to put the question of transitional rules before parliament for another vote.
"Our position is that they broke an agreement that we had between all parties, and their action made that agreement invalid. So at the moment we don't have a pairing agreement," Samuel Gonzales Westling, group leader of the Left Party, told The Local on Monday.
"Our position is that we think that we should have a new vote, by whatever means are possible."
READ ALSO: Sweden Democrats accused of cheating to block transitional rules for citizenship
What would a revote on transitional rules look like?
Niels Paarup-Petersen, the immigration spokesperson for the Centre Party, said that as parliament has already passed the bill without transitional rules, it can't, formally speaking, be put to a second vote.
"You cannot have a 'revote'. That isn't how it works. But the government could draw up special legislation on transitional rules and put this before the parliament within a month or so, and then everyone can vote on that."
Westling said this could work in one of two ways: either the government itself could submit a new proposal to the Social Insurance Committee, which is responsible for drawing up immigration policy, or opposition MPs on the committee could propose it as a so-called "committee initiative" or utskottsinitiativ.
"The committee has to discuss it either way, but the proposition from the government always has to come to the chamber for our votes," Westling said.
He said that ideally the government would submit it, and that even if it didn't, government party MPs on the committee should vote to put it before the parliament.
"I think it's a matter of respect for the democratic process, because what happened was that the Sweden Democrats actually cheated. If we had had a full parliament, I'm pretty sure that we would not have lost that vote on Wednesday."
"We can't be sure that that's the case, but since they broke the agreement, we know for sure that they wouldn't have won at that moment."
Paarup-Petersen, who is a deputy member of the committee, agreed that the government should submit the special legislation.
"I think the government should do this if they don't want to be punished and, to be honest, if they are democrats."
How likely is the government to table new legislation on transitional rules?
The Moderate Party's group leader, Mattias Karlsson, on Thursday last week seemed to recognise that the Sweden Democrats' move had destroyed confidence in the pairing-off system, but over the weekend leading Moderates queued up to defend the Sweden Democrats and attack the opposition parties.
In an opinion piece in the Expressen newspaper, Migration Minister Johan Forssell dismissed a Social Democrat article accusing the Sweden Democrats of cheating as a way of distracting the public from their own support for transitional rules that would have exempted 100,000 people from new citizenship rules, putting Sweden's security at risk.
Carl Johan Sonesson, the Moderate leader in Region Skåne, meanwhile, argued in a post on Facebook that the Social Democrats had broken parliamentary praxis in a similar way after the 2018 election when they didn't vote for an MP from the third-biggest party to be deputy speaker, because they were a Sweden Democrat.
In a televised debate on SVT on Sunday, the Sweden Democrats' leader Jimmie Åkesson reiterated the claim that the Sweden Democrats had sent in the extra MPs to prevent the two independent MPs undermining the majority that voters had given the government in the 2022 election.
Liberal leader Simona Mohamsson said during that she did not think that the issue should be voted on again.
Paarup-Petersen argued that the Moderate, Liberal and Sweden Democrat pushback suggested that the government was unwilling to put the rule to another vote.
"I've noticed that a lot of Moderates have been defending the Sweden Democrats," he said. "I've seen quite a few explaining why this is reasonable."
How much leverage do the opposition parties have?
Even if the government parties are unlikely to willingly push for a new law bringing in transitional rules, there is still a chance that the opposition parties might force them.
If the opposition parties refuse to revive the pairing-off system until the election, this would cause major complications for the government parties, making their ability to pass legislation dependent on MPs not being ill or unexpectedly absent.
It would also force even the Sweden Democrat's leader, Jimmie Åkesson, who rarely attends parliament, to be physically present for every vote.
"It's for their sake that this system exists. I think it would be reasonable to say, 'OK, we can have a pairing-off system with the government, but the Sweden Democrats can no longer be part of it. So their MPs will have to show up in parliament every time there's a vote. To make sure that something passes, they will have to be there in full – all of them."
"Then the government side would lose more often, and they would lose many other things as well," Paarup-Petersen said.
If that were to start happening, he predicts, the government might concede and agree to put forward new legislation on transitional rules.
"For me, it's a strange hill to die on. Everybody thinks it's reasonable to have transitional rules. It's only Säpo [the security police] who are against them. If it were the language tests or the citizenship tests, I would understand."
Will the opposition play hardball?
The key question is whether the Social Democrats join the smaller opposition parties in pushing for another vote on transitional rules when the group leaders of the parliamentary parties meet with the speaker on Wednesday.
According to a Facebook post by the Green Party's leader, Amanda Lind, the Social Democrats also support calls for another vote. But the question is whether they will make it a strict condition for preserving the kvittning system.
Paarup-Petersen said that in his opinion, allowing what had happened to pass without a reaction would be unacceptable.
"There was an actual majority voting in favour of transitional rules, not a theoretical one, an actual one, and the Sweden Democrats stopped that. What do you call that, if you stop the actual majority of the parliament from having their votes counted? If not 'undemocratic behaviour', you would have to use stronger words."
He said he expected the Centre Party at least to take a strong line in Wednesday's meeting.
"I hope that my party will be very, very tough and I hope that the other opposition parties will be as well," he said. "We need to say, 'if you don't fix this shit, we're going to make you pay', because I think that is the only reasonable response. If the Sweden Democrats are not affected and don't pay for this anti-democratic behaviour, they will have won from doing it. You cannot let people win from that."
The Local has asked the Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Social Democrats, Green Party, Christian Democrats and Liberals for additional comments and will add them to this article when we hear back from them.
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