The murder of Sweden’s foreign minister: A Nordic and European tragedy

Date: 13/09/03

The murder of Anna Lindh, Sweden's foreign minister, has shaken the nation but may not make Swedes embrace Europe's single currency

ANNA LINDH, the Swedish foreign minister who died on September 11th after being stabbed the day before in a Swedish department store by an assailant apparently unknown to her, typified many of the good qualities associated with her country: candour, high-mindedness, a sense of justice and equality, and pragmatism. As foreign minister, she helped to push Sweden out of its traditional neutrality and towards a more active engagement in the wider world, particularly within the European Union.

Hence, to a large degree, her enthusiasm for Sweden to join the EU, which it did in 1995, and, more recently, to join Europe's single currency. She had been Sweden's most prominent promoter of the euro, matching the prime minister, Göran Persson. Her handsome face smiled out of thousands of posters festooned across the country. She was widely considered to be the pro-euro team's best asset. Many expected her to be the next prime minister.

In the first rush of national gloom and introspection following Mrs Lindh's death, some politicians suggested that the referendum should be postponed. Immediately after the attack, Mr Persson said that the yes side would stop campaigning, out of respect for the foreign minister, whether or not the referendum went ahead on schedule. But, with leaders of the opposition parties (including those who support the euro) urging that the vote should be held, the prime minister agreed that it should go ahead.

Inevitably, there were calls for Sweden's politicians to have tighter security. Inevitably, too, there were glum reminders of the murder in 1986 of the then prime minister, Olof Palme, after he left a Stockholm cinema; his killer has never been found. As The Economist went to press, Mrs Lindh's killer had not been caught. An onlooker described him merely as a tall man in camouflage fatigues.

As things stand, only the prime minister and King Carl XVI Gustaf have regular bodyguards. Ordinary citizens in the capital often bump into government ministers in the street or in the underground railway and enjoy bearding them about issues of the day. Despite the tragedy that befell Mrs Lindh, the Swedish public and politicians will be loth to dispense altogether with such openness, a treasured symbol of the country's egalitarian tradition.

Mrs Lindh's own career embodied much that has happened to Sweden over the past decade or so. Aged 46 and trained as a lawyer, she was always active in politics: she had been head of the Social Democrats' youth movement. Starting in local politics in Stockholm, she entered parliament in 1982 and soon achieved promotion, becoming environment minister in 1994 and foreign minister in 1998.

In comparison with older-guard members of her party, she was notably less ideological, and keen to move Sweden from its neutralist moral high ground, enthusing, for instance, about the country's recent readiness to co-operate with NATO in defence matters. She was also an ardent advocate of bringing the Baltic states both into NATO and into the EU.

At the same time, however, while urging solidarity with the United States after the felling of New York's Twin Towers two years ago, she was typically forthright in condemning the Americans for failing to wait for a UN Security Council resolution this spring before going to war in Iraq, describing President George Bush as a “lone ranger”. But, by virtue of her famed charm and intelligence, she kept a good rapport with, among others, Colin Powell, the American secretary of state, who once reportedly said there were three good things about Sweden: “Abba, Volvos and Anna Lindh”. (“Am I only third?” she is said to have quipped back.) More recently, she had been rude about Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, questioning Italy's suitability under his leadership to hold the EU's current six-month presidency.

In general, however, Mrs Lindh was at pains to pull Sweden more actively into the affairs of Europe, shifting the emphasis away from her country's focus on third-world matters (especially in Africa) while sustaining its position as one of the highest per capita donors to poor countries.

Yet, despite her enthusiasm for the euro, by the standards of the EU's founding core of countries, she did not uncritically favour ever closer political integration. She had become probably the most influential of the three Nordic EU countries' foreign ministers. In particular she demanded greater openness in EU affairs, in keeping with her own country's tradition. For that reason alone, she will be sorely missed on the international stage.

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