SVERIGES VÄNSTERLUTANDE EUROSKEPTIKER

Abstract

During the last 15 years the Swedish Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) has gone from demanding Sweden’s immediate exit out of the European Union to no longer demanding Sweden's departure from the EU at all. This paper investigates how this transition occurred, how the arguments that the Left Party used to argue against the EU has changed throughout this time period and how the 2 major crises, the euro crisis and the refugee crisis that took place during this period of time has affected the Left Party’s Euroscepticism. The result of this paper shows that the Left party´s Euroscepticism has experienced a gradual and steady decline with only a short time frame between 2014-2017 where there was no significant change in the party’s Eurosceptic attitudes. The results also show that the two crises only had a minimal impact on the Left Party´s Euroscepticism, as opposed to the increase in Euroscepticism that other European left leaning parties had experienced during the same time period.