Analysis: Preparedness important issue in the coming years

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's response in the SVT interview on Easter Sunday clearly signals that the question of Sweden's preparedness, which has long been considered a question on the margin, will be raised as one of the most important in the Swedish political debate in the coming years.

Similar hearings from other parliamentary parties are also heard: Preparedness must be better. Contingency stocks, at least some of them, should be rebuilt.

After the end of the Cold War, a major dismantling of the Swedish defense began. When the military defense was put down, both civil defense and emergency preparedness followed with just the speed. Swedish EU membership and a liberalization of the pharmacy market have also affected the state of preparedness in, for example, food and pharmaceuticals.

Inadequate preparedness has been discussed and questioned in several state investigations and reports in recent years. The issue has also been renewed when the security policy situation in Sweden's neighborhood gradually deteriorated.

But no other event has so clearly exposed the deficiencies as the corona pandemic. For Swedish, it is not least about the lack of medical and protective equipment. There, after the realignment of the pharmacy market, the regions would take responsibility, but this has obviously not happened. At the same time, a large part of the Swedish field hospitals have been closed down over a long period of years.

In a situation when several EU countries have also imposed export restrictions on certain medical equipment, the question has also been raised whether EU membership really works as it was intended in times of crisis.

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has so far, during the corona crisis, chosen a defensive stance on his own and the Social Democrats' responsibility for the shortcomings in readiness. In the SVT interview on Easter Eve he admitted that his party bears such a responsibility, but he is careful to emphasize that it is also shared with other parties in Sweden.

And that's true. The dismantling of the military, civil defense and emergency stocks has been done by both social democratic and bourgeois governments. The closure of the regiments was initiated by S-governments, but the alliance government continued with the cuts after the change of power in 2006. The alliance government also re-regulated the pharmacy market without securing the emergency preparedness issue.

Nevertheless, Stefan Löfvens has been prime minister since 2014 and had plenty of time to act. Warning signs were also missing. The forest fires in 2018, for example, revealed major deficiencies, among other things in the case of fireflies and helicopters, the corona crisis has shown similar deficiencies on the healthcare side.

In recent years, the Government and the Riksdag have contributed large amounts to the military defense. The civil defense must also be rebuilt. Stefan Löfven also refers to the national security strategy the government adopted a few years ago. But this has not come much further than the stage of investigation.

It is clear that he and the government are now upgrading this long-delayed issue. So do the opposition parties, which will lead to the question of Sweden's preparedness, which has long been regarded as icy, now again seems to be of great importance in Swedish political debate.