Christian Danielsson, Sweden’s permanent representative to the European Union, sums up the situation at the start of July 2009 in a word: “No one envies us.” That is understandable considering the three major challenges ahead for the Swedish EU Presidency during the next six months..

1. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE

The EU of 27, as well as the EU of 16 which shares the euro, is still in the throes of a global economic crisis. All capitals are counting on Stockholm to pull the EU out of the slump. The euro states will therefore be coordinated by one that is not a member of the eurozone or of its consultative body, the Eurogroup. Meanwhile, the scourge of unemployment continues to spread: it now affects 10% of Europeans and 25% of young people. All eyes are naturally on Sweden, awaiting proposals for collective action that can make a difference. Sweden itself has just turned its back on a century of Social Democratic leadership. The centre-right coalition government faces the severe test of pushing all its EU partners to perfect their surveillance of the financial sector, reduce debt and start brainstorming on a forthcoming decade of growth to replace a moribund Lisbon strategy.

2. CLIMATE CHALLENGE

The European Union, which is more determined than the rest of the world to reduce the greenhouse effect and promote renewable energy, is staking all in December in Copenhagen: convincing the developed or emerging countries to imitate it while leading the poor nations in its wake by helping them financially. Sweden knows it is responsible for the success of not only the bargaining but also of the global UN conference as a whole.

3. INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE

The Union is taking ages to secure, with the Lisbon Treaty, the institutional improvements it needs to work more effectively. Sweden is fully aware that these issues are the least of the worries of a majority of European citizens. It also knows that the situation will be radically different depending on whether the Irish, who vote again in early October, reject the treaty or approve it: it will either have to manage an existential crisis or usher in a new era. Nor can it rule out the possibility of the president of the Czech Republic or his Polish opposite number tilting at windmills, since both have so far postponed their signature of the treaty. If the Irish vote ‘yes’, preparation will begin for appointing the Union’s three official leaders: its European Council president, foreign minister and European Commission president, if the latter has not already been named (see prospective candidates in Europolitics 3767). These three choices will unquestionably mark the Union’s history. But before then, at the end of 2009, an obstacle course of negotiations and a pile of complicated issues await Stockholm (Europolitics reviews them in this special edition).The ambassador is right: no other country envies the role of skippering a vessel that is obliged to tack back and forth – could the Swedish Presidency’s logo, with its sinuous S, be a subliminal message? – on such capricious seas.