Even as the ‘extremist’ AfD seeks further election gains in Germany, Europe’s leaders can learn from Sweden’s dangerous embrace with far-right ideology

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Europe’s focus turned nervously to Sweden on Sunday, after an explosive election in Germany just a week earlier placed a far-right party, officially classed as “extremist”, on the brink of power in a German state for the first time since the Nazi era. A party with neo-Nazi roots has been pulling the government’s strings in Sweden for the last four years - would the country’s general election put the far right formally in government? Or would enough Swedes opt for a gear change, having seen the Sweden Democrats’ hardline (some would say poisonous) agenda in action?

Votes were still being counted on Wednesday but it was immediately clear that the far-right Sweden Democrats had suffered a setback; their first loss of support among voters since it entered parliament for the first time 16 years ago. The party slipped from being the country’s second biggest party to its third.