The Swedish parliament has approved Moderates Party leader Ulf Kristersson as its new Prime Minister as head of a three-party coalition.
Kristersson's candidacy was supported by 176 lawmakers, 173 voted against, as broadcast by the parliament's website. The new PM is expected to give a press conference shortly. He is expected to announce picks for his ministerial team on Tuesday and his budget for 2023 within weeks.
Ulf Kristersson, the narrow victor at a general election on September 11, had stated on Friday that he had secured a deal to form a three-party government between his Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, supported in parliament by their key ally, the Sweden Democrats.
The Swedish parliament’s speaker, Andreas Norlén, had given Kristersson a deadline of October 14 to negotiate a coalition deal. In a press conference at the time, Kristersson, a former minister of social affairs who became Moderate Party leader in 2017, said that there were “some issues that we want to work a bit more on so we can announce everything together”. He stopped short of offering any details, saying:
“I do not want to talk about any parts [of the deal] until I can talk about everything at once.”
The new Swedish government will face a plethora of domestic challenges, such as soaring energy prices, while on the international scene it takes over the presidency of the Council of the EU in January from the Czech Republic and continues negotiating its entry into NATO alongside Finland.