SNU invited Swedish politicians to a panel discussion on"Welfare and Democracy"
"Korea Needs Its Own Welfare Model", said Swedish Panel

Swedish politicians of different parties held a panel discussion on the welfare state at Seoul National University on Wednesday, and said the so-called ``Swedish model’’ is not a perfect model for Korea to follow.

Mikael Odenberg, group leader for the Moderate Party, said, ``There is no role model to copy’’ for Korea in terms of the nation’s welfare policy, stressing that the welfare policy should take into consideration specific conditions of a nation.

Odenberg said that the Swedish welfare model, which is different from that of western European countries and the United States also has pros and cons. Particularly, high taxation was picked by most of the panel members as one of the most serious problems preventing Swedish people from working.

The discussion attended by Bjorn von Sydow, speaker of the Swedish Parliament, and five Swedish politicians representing each political party showed the debate on how high tax rates should be is still going on in the European country.

``The overall tax burden in Sweden is 50.6 percent,’’ Anna Gronlund Krantz, group leader of the Liberal Party said.

She said that high taxation is used for covering free education, health care and so on for the Swedish people with consensus, but how high the tax rate should be is still on the top of the debate list.

The opposition parties want to lower the tax rate to 45 percent, almost same as the Scandinavian level while the government prefers to maintain the current level, she said.

Stefan Attefall, group leader of the Swedish Christian Democrats, said that collective agreement and accompanying responsibility play a very important role in any society, of course in the welfare states, too.

Attefall, for example, said that about 80 percent of Swedish workers belong to a union, which is a very high rate compared with those of other countries. She hoped for responsible relations between the union and the management.

Meanwhile, Helana Hillar Rosenqvist, group leader of the Green Party, said that economic growth must go hand in hand with what is good for the environment regardless of degree of the nation’s welfare.

In cooperation with the Seoul National University president, the Swedish Embassy arranged the discussion panel on ``Democracy and the Welfare State'' at 10:15-11:30 a.m. in the international conference room at Multimedia Building of the university.

April 15, 2006
SNU PR Office