History

Globalization

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The European Union, EMU

In 1994 Sweden held a referendum to deicide weather to enter the European Union or not. After months of public debate and a large skepticism among the public, 52,2% of the voting Swedes said yes on November the 13th. All the polls and surveys made around that time showed a majority of NO votes. But the government managed to convince people to vote YES on the last weeks of campaign. It appears that the few weeks around the referendum where the only ones where the YES side was in majority.

The big debate at the time of the referendum was wheatear Sweden would be able to keep their independence and neutrality after entering the EU. A lot of people were reluctant to the idea of “moving the power to Brussels”. These types of opinions were normal to find in rural areas. A lot of people believed that “the power is already too far away now that it is Stockholm”.

The only places that where actually positive to EU where the big cities like Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, but the majority of YES votes in those urban areas where enough to create a majority in the referendum.

In 2003 people, in a time where surveys and polls actually showed that a majority of the population are positive to the EU, there was a referendum about the euro. Once again the people reacted with a big skepticism, especially the rural areas.

Although the government and most of the political parties where positive, their campaigning wasn’t convincing enough to a majority. Especially as the last week of campaigning where abruptly interrupted as Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister at that time, was murdered in a shopping galleria in Stockholm.

The result of the both referendum shows that there is a big difference between the urban and the rural Sweden. Tendencies show that, the further away from Stockholm you get, the more people are reluctant to globalization.

Although the industry of Gällivare is widely dependent of the global economy, people here feel that they have little in common with people living in southern Europe or Asia.