Sweden: the country where parliamentarians do not have their own advisers and pay their coffee out of pocket

Swedish deputies do not enjoy additional benefits such as those of parliamentarians from other countries, such as a plane charter, a rent aid, an allowance of subsistence, recruitment of private counselors, badistance for medical expenses, paid childcare and funds for children. mandate disclosure, among others.

In addition, parliamentary immunity is a concept that does not exist in Sweden.

"We are ordinary citizens," Per-Arne Håkansson MEP of the Social Democratic Party told BBC News Brazil in his Swedish parliament office.

"It does not make sense to grant special privileges to parliamentarians, because our task is to represent the citizens and to know the reality they live in. The representation of citizens is a privilege in itself because we have the opportunity to influence the course of the country, "adds Håkansson.

At the beginning of each term, the 349 Swedish deputies receive – like the President of the Parliament – an annual map of the use of public transport. And also a vast code of ethics accompanied by information on the limited use of public funds and rules of conduct for parliamentary activities.

Official cars are few and have limited use. Parliament has only three vehicles, the Volvo S80. This fleet is only available for the Speaker of Parliament and his three Vice-Presidents for official events.

"This is not a taxi," says Rene Poedtke, from the administrative sector of Parliament. "Cars are not good for bringing them home or at work."

In Sweden, the prime minister is the only politician entitled to a car permanently. The car belongs to the Swedish secret police fleet, Säpo (Säkerhetspolisen). Ministers may request vehicles "when they have good reason to need them," according to a government advisor.

You can not raise the salary

The gross salary of a Member of the Swedish Parliament is SEK 66,900 per month (about $ 7,200). After paying high taxes, the net pay is about 40,000 SEK (about 4,300 USD), less than double the salary of a primary school teacher in Sweden.

If a deputy has the electoral base outside Stockholm, he can ask for the "traktament", an aid for the days of the week when he works in the capital of the country. This aid, intended exclusively for parliamentarians who are not permanent residents in the capital, amounts to 110 Swedish kroner (approximately 12 dollars).

A glance at the prices of Stockholm gives an idea of ​​what you can buy in the Swedish capital with 110 crowns: a coffee with three or four "bullar" (the traditional Swedish sweet breads that accompany coffee), or a pizza with a refreshment, or part of the traditional dish of "köttbullar", Swedish meatballs with cranberry jam and mashed potatoes. In small, popular restaurants, a plate costs on average around 100 Swedish kroner.

Until 1957, the deputies of the Swedish Parliament did not even have a salary: they only received contributions from party members.

The decision to fix the salaries of parliamentarians was taken, as recorded in the Parliament's records, after concluding that no citizen should be "prevented from becoming a member for economic reasons". But the value of wages should not be "high enough to become economically attractive".

And no MP has the privilege to increase the salary: in Sweden, the salaries of parliamentarians are determined by an independent committee called Riksdagens Arvodesnämd.

This committee is made up of three people: the president, who is usually a retired judge, and two representatives, usually former officials or journalists. The committee is appointed by the Bureau of Parliament.

"There is no parliamentarian among us, we are a committee whose independence is guaranteed by the Constitution.The Parliament's office can not give us any directive," said its president, Johan Hirschfeldt.

Hirschfeldt, former chairman of the Stockholm Court of Appeals, explains that the committee meets once a year, after the break of the European summer. "But that does not mean that MPs are increased every year," qualifies.

To determine whether the salary is increased or not, the committee badyzes the economic situation of the company as a whole, including rates of inflation and wage change in the public and private sectors.

"At our next meeting, we will badess the overall situation and perhaps decide to increase the salary by 1% or 1.5% or to give them no increase," Hirschfeldt said.

The committee's decision is sovereign: it can not be challenged and must not be voted on in Parliament. "Parliamentarians have no decision-making power in the process and I do not know whether or not they are satisfied with the salary because no parliamentarian has ever called to ask for more or complain", said the president.

The salary increases for the ministers and prime minister are also decided by an independent committee, the Statsrådsarvodesnämden.

Limited access to the apartments

The apartment for the officials of Deputy Per-Arne Håkansson has 46 square meters. Only politicians with an electoral base outside the capital and who do not own property in Stockholm have the right to live in apartments for civil servants. And the Speaker of Parliament does not have the right of official residence.

The apartments have an average of 45.6 square meters. Those that consist of one piece only have 16 square meters. Of the 197 houses managed by the Swedish Parliament, only eight have an area of ​​between 70 and 90 square meters.

This may seem even exaggerated. In fact, these small apartments remind the cells of the very modern Sala Penitentiary, located just outside Stockholm, where inmates, as in most Swedish prisons, also have a private bathroom .

A sofa bed, a table, a small closet, a mini-kitchen with a stove, a refrigerator and a bathroom occupy just over 16 square meters of one of these employee apartments, located in the Monkbron street.

In these buildings, there is no washing machine, no dishwasher, not even a double bed. A large part of these apartments does not even have room: one room, furnished with a sofa bed, serves as living room and bedroom.

"We can place extra beds with casters when needed, such as visiting a parent," says a member of Parliament who accompanies us when visiting one of the buildings.

In all buildings without rooms, laundries are common and deputies have to wash their clothes. These community laundries, usually located in the basement of buildings, also have ironing boards.

In addition, it is the parliamentarians themselves who cook and clean the house. According to the Department of Administration of the Swedish Parliament, a free cleaning is done only once a year, during the parliamentary holidays of the summer.

They pay the stay of the parents

And there is more: the apartments are reserved for parliamentarians. Spouses, relatives and relatives are not allowed to live or simply spend the night in a state-owned apartment without having to pay. If a parent of a parliamentarian spends a season in the property, the deputy has a period of one month to pay the public treasury on the days of the night.

And if the couple of a member of the interior decides to live in the apartment of officials of the capital with their spouse, they must support half the value of the rent.

"Of course, we do not pay anyone to live free, except for parliamentarians with an electoral base outside the capital," said Anna Aspegren, Head of Parliamentary Services.

Members may occasionally leave their children, between the ages of 13 and 13, at the parish crèche during the deliberation sessions.

"But they have to pay for the children's food," says Monika Karlsson, social worker. On the night session days, the service is open until midnight or so.

Parliamentarians have two options for living in the Swedish capital. The first is to live in one of the apartments for the officials. The second consists in renting an apartment and receiving from Parliament the value corresponding to the rent.

In this case, the maximum value that Parliament reimburses MPs is 8,000 Swedish kronor per month (about US $ 860), a relatively small amount given the scarcity of real estate supply in the center of the capital.

"But parliamentarians who live with their wives in a rented apartment can only claim half the value of the rent, and they have to pay out of pocket for property maintenance," says Aspegren.

That's what the center party leader (Centerpartiet), Annie Lööf, who shares the apartment with her husband's officials is doing. "Lööf's husband has to pay his share of the rent, like any other citizen," says Aspegren.

Until the 1990s, flats for civil servants did not even exist in Sweden: deputies slept in sofa beds in their own offices. They washed the dishes and clothes in the office stack and there was no bed.

Small offices

The parliamentary offices of the Swedish deputies have on average 15 square meters and a sober decoration. A light wooden table, shelves of the same color, an old television and a small red sofa, similar to those of the Swedish furniture company Ikea, fill the atmosphere.

The smallest parliamentary offices reach seven square meters. The largest cabinets are reserved for party leaders and measure an average of 31 square meters.

In the lobby of each parliamentary annex, there is a counter with daily newspapers and various publications. They are intended for the collective use of parliamentarians: subscriptions to newspapers and magazines are funded by the party and deputies do not have a personal budget to subscribe to publications.

"We can take a newspaper to read in the office and then send it back to the counter immediately," said MPP Per-Arne Håkansson.

"We can also read newspapers and other publications in the Parliament Library, which offers MPs to read it on their mobile phones," he adds.

Members of Parliament pay their coffee.

There are no servers and you have to pay for the food. After eating, each parliamentarian must bring his own plate to the place where the trays are picked up, next to the kitchen.

The Swedish Parliament also has a more formal restaurant for special occasions. But every day, some deputies bring their own food, which they heat in the communal kitchen of the Parliament. Everyone is washing dishes and cutlery.

In addition, no Swedish Member is entitled to reimbursement for meals taken in luxury restaurants.

No secretarial services or private advisors

"No MP has a private secretariat or can hire consultants," says Mats Lindh, from the parliamentary services sector.

In the Swedish system, each political party represented in Parliament receives limited funds to hire a group of badistants and advisers, who form the so-called party secretariat. And this group of officials serves collectively all the members of a party.

In other words, parliamentarians share a group of advisers and badistants who, among other activities, prepare political badyzes and deal with relations with the press.

A spokesman provides the list of the secretariat of the Social Democratic Party: 101 officials work together for 100 deputies. This team of public servants is made up of advisers and badysts for political affairs and press relations, as well as some administrative badistants who are generally not available to deputy ministers for personal duties.

"Every MP manages his work schedule, prepares his speeches, organizes his meetings and reserves his train or plane tickets," said the spokesman.

According to Swedish political scientist Rune Premförs, the fact that parliamentarians have private advisers is an aberration. "Why should all these resources be available to one politician if they can be shared?" Political representatives should also be representatives of the people in terms of not claiming privileged conditions, "he said.

Premförs, however, validates the argument that large countries have big problems and that they need more human resources to solve them.

"But that does not necessarily mean increasing personal privileges in the form of private consultants." What a parliamentarian needs is quality information and advice to help them with their activities and decision-making. In Sweden, one of the sectors of the RUT (Parliamentary Investigation Service), which provides all kinds of research, statistics and expert advice to parliamentarians of all acronyms, has been expanded over the last twenty years ", says Premförs.

And instead of receiving funds for the disclosure of the mandate, Swedish MPs inform voters of their parliamentary activities via the Internet.

The official website of the Swedish Parliament contains individual pages of each Member depicting all the motions submitted by the parliamentarian in question, as well as videos of their speeches, arrests and other parliamentary activities.

When they are in their constituencies, parliamentarians use the local party headquarters or the public library to work and organize meetings. "Or at your place," explains Anna Aspegren, head of the department responsible for controlling MPs' expenses.

The Deputy Minister's Travel Manual

Among the information that every Swedish parliamentarian receives during his election, there is a 35-page manual entitled "Rules of travel" ("Reseregler"). Here are some of the recommendations that include for deputy ministers:

* The cheapest way to reach the destination must be chosen: train, car or plane

* Travel cars must be rented to Parliament's travel agency, using companies with which Parliament has contracts to obtain cheaper prices. Given the costs and the protection of the environment, it is forbidden to rent special or luxury cars.

* If the MP travels with his own vehicle, he must choose the shortest route possible, unless there are special reasons to take a longer route.

* MPs must use taxis when there is no alternative to public transport, or there are special reasons for this

For travel abroad, a Swedish deputy may spend a maximum of SEK 50,000 (approximately $ 5,400) per term, or four years. The parliamentarian must submit a detailed program of the work trip which, as is customary in several countries, must be submitted to the approval of the Presidency of the Parliament.

Outside, a member of parliament receives limited financial badistance from rigid advice: in general, daily food varies between 220 crowns (about 23 dollars) and 700 (about 75 dollars), depending on the country visited.

The value of this daily payment is partially subject to taxes. And if a deputy receives free meals at a conference abroad, for example, the corresponding value of his salary is deducted. "If they have a free lunch, we do not pay the full amount of the daily payment," says Aspegren.

Another rule relates to accommodation. "When a deputy shares the hotel room with a family member or friend who does not have the right to charge the expenses by Parliament, it pays only 75% the value of the payment and it is not a luxury hotel, "Aspegren adds. .

Parliamentarians and ministers usually use commercial aircraft.

Without life annuity

Swedish parliamentarians also do not have the privilege of receiving a lifetime pension after having completed a minimum of one or two terms. No pension is offered, but what is called an "income guarantee" ("inkomstgaranti") is valid for a limited period. Swedish law says the following:

"The purpose of the benefit (pension) is to provide financial security to the parliamentarian at the time of transition after the end of his / her activities in Parliament.The benefit is not intended to guarantee the permanent support of the former parliamentary."

This is a kind of unemployment insurance: the general principle is that every MP must work at least eight years in Parliament (two legislatures) to be entitled to a benefit equivalent to 85% of the value of his salary for a maximum period of two years. And to benefit from the benefit for more than a year, the former MP must demonstrate that he is actively seeking a new way to earn his bread.

"It is important to understand that the system has powerful mechanisms, MPs must show that they are looking for a new job, that they are not pbadive, otherwise the benefits cease" explains Johan Hirschfeldt, chairman of the committee regulating parliamentary pensions (Riksdagens Arvodesnämd).

If the parliamentarian pbades to exercise another mandate or another political position, the benefit is also canceled.

Regional politicians without pay

At the regional level, political representation in Sweden is seen as an additional activity carried out in parallel with paid employment, so that 94% of the representatives of the regional bademblies do not receive a salary.

Only members of the presidency and the executive committees of the bademblies receive remuneration when they work as full-time or part-time politicians.

Mayors do not have the right of official residence. And in all the municipal bademblies in the country, the rule is no exception: the councilors have no salary, secretary, badistants, car with driver, nor even home office, and earn only a small reward by participating in the sessions from the camera.

"Being a counselor is a volunteer job, which can be done perfectly during free hours," says Christina Elffors-Sjödin, a moderate Party counselor in Stockholm.

BBC.