And outside Almedalen...

As I have written before, the "week of politics" is happening this week on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. This means that I am one of some 400 journalists running around at different political seminars and meetings in the city of Visby. At night we all drink beer in the same bar and it is all very weird , but a lot of fun at the same time. Anyway, this week is all about Swedish politics. And the World Cup, of course.

But I just have to comment on one piece of European news. In Slovakia, a social democratic party seems to be forming a government with an extreme right-wing party. I was very happy to read that the Party of European Socialist are opposing this (quote from the PES press release):

"Following his meeting with Robert Fico, Leader of the Slovak SMER Party,
the President of the Party of European Socialists Poul Nyrup Rasmussen
said "It is very clear that we cannot accept in our political family a
coalition with extreme right-wing nationalists".

The question of SMER membership of the Party of European Socialists
will be on the agenda of the next meeting of the PES Presidency" said
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. "As long as SNS is in Government in Slovakia my
recommendation would be to suspend SMER from the PES."

The next meeting of the PES Presidency will be held as soon as possible."

I think Rasmussen is right, and to suspend SMER will (sadly) have to be the next step.

[Picture of Rasmussen taken yesterday, when he visited the week of politics in Sweden]