Ulf Kristersson
Ulf Kristersson has been Prime Minister of Sweden since October 2022, leading a minority coalition that depends on a party his own had spent a decade refusing to deal with. Born in Lund in 1963 and raised in Torshälla, he studied economics at Uppsala, led the Moderate Party's youth wing from 1988, and worked in finance and as a management consultant. He was a member of parliament in the 1990s, then a municipal commissioner for social affairs in Stockholm, before returning to national politics as minister for social security from 2010 to 2014, where he tightened sickness-benefit rules. He became Moderate leader in 2017. His premiership rests on the Tidö Agreement, negotiated after the 2022 election, under which the Sweden Democrats — a party with roots in the white-nationalist fringe of the 1980s — support the government and shape policy without holding ministries. Every major party, including his own, had previously ruled out cooperation with them. The agreement made migration and crime the government's central business. Two things defined the term. Gang violence, driven by conflicts among criminal networks in immigrant-heavy suburbs, produced shootings and bombings at rates without European parallel, and the government responded with visitation zones, expanded surveillance powers and longer sentences. And Sweden abandoned two hundred years of non-alignment: he applied for NATO membership after Russia invaded Ukraine, then spent twenty months meeting Turkish and Hungarian objections, including over Kurdish groups and Quran burnings, before joining in March 2024. He has also cut taxes on fuel and income, and reversed course on nuclear power, legislating to support new reactors.
- Lived: 1963 CE – ?
- Nationality: Swedish
- Roles: Prime Minister of Sweden (2022-present)
