Mikael Damberg, Sweden's Minister for Enterprise and Innovation, speaks at a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden on October 20, 2017. Fredrik Sandberg, TT News Agency via REUTERS File Photo
STOCKHOLM, Nov 30 Reuters -- Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson picked Social Democrat veteran Mikael Damberg as finance minister in her minority government on Tuesdayas she pledged to fight climate change and gang crime and strengthen the welfare system.
Damberg is a minister of the interior, where he has been the face of the government's efforts to tackle gang crime.
Andersson said in a speech to parliament that she wants to champion a green industrial revolution to improve a welfare system that has been sorely tested by the coronaviruses and come to grips with gang violence.
She said that violence is a poison that threatens our whole unity as a society.
Damberg, a long-time government minister, had been widely expected to take over the finance portfolio which Andersson held in former Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's centre-left coalition government for many years.
Damberg will have to implement a budget formulated by three opposition parties, including the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, whose gains over the past decade lie at the heart of Sweden's recent political turmoil.
Last week Parliament adopted budget amendments put forward by the opposition which heavily reshaped spending plans, and Damberg can only look to change that in the spring supplementary budget bill if he can find backing in the Riksdag.
Andersson was elected premier by the House of Representatives for the second time in less than a week. The finance minister had won a similar vote last week but threw in the towel hours later after a junior coalition partner left the government over the budget vote. The next general election will be in September next year and the new cabinet may be short-lived.