Week 22: Climate meeting in Stockholm and Turkey's demands for Swedish NATO membership guide this week's debate

During the past week, both Turkey's demands for Swedish NATO membership and the Stockholm + 50 Climate Summit have been debated. How should Sweden respond to Turkey's various demands and what is most important to prioritize in the climate issue?

Ever since Sweden and Finland submitted their applications to join NATO in mid-May, Turkey, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has put forward several counter-claims. Dagens Nyheter's editorial staff believes that Sweden should not be intimidated but instead keep ice in its stomach. They believe that "a longer blockade of Sweden's and Finland's applications would constitute a very high stakes game" as the entry of the two Nordic countries would contribute to increased security.

The demands that are made are both absurd and actually intended for an audience other than the Swedish, this is what Peter Santesson says in Expressen. With Turkey in the midst of an economic crisis and declining opinion figures for President Erdogan, it is a well-known ploy to construct an external enemy to minimize the critical gaze directed at himself. Aftonbladet's editorial staff agrees and points out that Sweden, with the Social Democrats and Magdalena Andersson in the driver's seat, can not give in to these pressures. Instead, the editorial staff highlights other potential solutions in the event of a protracted process - including a strengthened EU defense with various security guarantees or a NATO without Turkey. Last week, among others, Lena Andersson, in Svenska Dagbladet, the proposal to withdraw the Swedish NATO application. This, says Anna Dahlberg in Expressen, would be pure madness and a betrayal of Finland by "historical standards". Instead, Dahlberg believes that Sweden must be prepared to compromise - not least in terms of the fight against terrorism and contacts with the Kurdish parity PYD.

High-level meeting in Stockholm brings new life to the climate debate

The UN arranged Stockholm + 50 meeting took place in Stockholm on 2-3 June to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the UN's first climate summit, and to help increase the pace of the transition to sustainable and green societies. And after fifty years of climate change, the situation is more acute than ever, type Lovisa Arvidsson in Aftonbladet. The Paris Agreement in 2015 was a success in that in an era of "fake news" and "alternative facts" the world was made to agree that global warming is a problem in general, but it is a completely different matter to roll up your sleeves and get the job done. she writes.

How to get the job done is exactly what is discussed in another debate article in Aftonbladet, signed Greta Thunberg and 56 other Right Livelihood laureates. They list a series of urgent measures they are urging governments around the world to take, including ending financial support for fossil fuels and reducing military budgets. It is high time to stop discussing minimal measures, and instead make the real changes needed, they write.