An Employment Union An Employment Union for Europe? for Europe? The Role of the Swedish The Role of the Swedish Government Government 1 Simon Lightfoot The Swedish Government's proposal for an `Employment Union' to oset the potential increases in unemployment caused by moves towards Economic and Monetary Union, has put the problem of unemployment at the top of the agenda of the current Intergovern- mental Conference. Domestic political pres- sures coupled with a belief that the EU oers the potential for a solution to this problem, were key factors behind the decision to table an amendment. Forging links with other European social democratic parties to gen- erate support for the proposal, the Swedish Social Democrats need the proposal to suc- ceed for both domestic political ends and to safeguard the future of the European project. Introduction In Sweden, a country with historically low levels of unemployment of under three per- cent, the present levels of over 9 percent are seen as a national crisis. Indeed, as a recent speech by Goran Persson, the new Swedish Prime Minister, shows ®ghting unemployment for the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) is not just a question of policy, `it is a matter of deep ideological commitment' (Financial Times, 16 March 1996). With the decline of the Swedish model 2 and the coun- try's inability to tackle the problems caused by the power of international capital, the SAP has attempted to break `the national eco- nomic powerlessness through European Union (EU) membership' (Stigendal, 1995, p.21). The SAP believes that only by a co- ordinated, Europe-wide strategy, can Sweden ever achieve low levels of unemployment again. This new direction for the SAP was set out in the 1994 election manifesto, which states that `a social democratic government will place the struggle against unemployment . . . at the top of the political agenda for parti- cipation in European co-operation' (SAP, 1994, p.4). Unemployment has also been high on the agenda of the EU since the 1994 Essen Summit and is likely to dominate the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), which started in March 1996. This is important as the IGC was set up in order to deal with institutional revisions of the Maastricht Treaty and was not expected to deal with issues such as unemployment. It is in this context that the recent decision by the Swedish Gov- ernment to propose the idea of an `Employ- Politics (1997) 17(2) pp. 109±115 # Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 109 Simon Lightfoot, Nottingham Trent University.