In Sweden, the “oligarchs” of the welfare state in the sights of several political parties

In all his schools, his portrait hangs on the wall. Born in Germany in 1946, raised in the United States, Barbara Bergström built her fortune in Sweden. A nice jackpot which amounts to around 1 billion crowns (93.5 million euros), won thanks to the forty establishments it has opened throughout the country over the past thirty years, under the Internationella Engelska brand. Skolan (IES – “international English school”), where lessons are given in the language of Shakespeare and where discipline is essential.

A controversial personality, the former teacher now divides her life between Florida and Täby, north of Stockholm, a laboratory city for the privatization of public services which she chose to set up her company’s headquarters. She is now only a minority shareholder. Since 2020, IES has been controlled by German venture capital firm Paradigm Capital.

“A real heist”

Married in second marriage to Hans Bergström, former editor-in-chief of the daily Dagens Nyheter and fervent defender of private education, the septuagenarian is part of this caste that some call the “oligarchs of the welfare state”: “These are people who took advantage of the privatization of public services, from the 1990s, to enrich themselves, when whole sections of the public sector were opened up to competition, and sometimes put up for sale at low prices, without always following the law”summarizes Sten Svensson, former teacher and journalist.

In 2014, he devoted a report to them, published by the think tank Tiden, close to the Social Democratic Party. Sten Svensson paints the portrait of a small group of men and women, straddling the political sphere and the business world, often connected to the conservative party of the Moderates or the liberal party, architects of the privatization of services in Sweden, which nevertheless remain largely financed by the taxpayer.

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At the end of the 1980s, discontent rose in the Scandinavian country. The state is considered too heavy, too slow and too centralized. Neoliberalism appeals, and with it the idea that opening up sectors such as education or health to competition will improve their quality, by allowing Swedes to choose. But the reforms adopted in the 1990s went much further: “No investigation was carried out upstream. What started insidiously accelerated from the 2000s, and we witnessed a real heist”says Sten Svensson.

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