by Fu Yiming
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Swedish government announced on Saturday that the minority ruling government has reached an agreement with the opposition alliance on a budget proposal and thus to cancel the early elections next year.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said during a press conference in Stockholm on Saturday that the agreement between his minority center-left government and the center-right opposition alliance allows his government to continue ruling and arranging a new election is not "topical anymore."
"Thanks to the agreement we have found enabling a minority government to govern, the government will not organize early elections," Lofven said.
"This decision means that Sweden can be governed despite the difficult parliamentary situation," said Lofven.
Lofven said the cross-bloc agreement is valid until 2022 and during which period opposition alliance would not vote against the upcoming government's budget proposals. The agreement also coordinates the parties' polices on pensions, defense and energy issues.
According to the agreement, if a minority government is to be formed after the national elections in 2018, no matter which one of the two political blocs leads it, the government's budgets shall pass in parliament to guarantee the sound operations of the minority government.
Such a cross-bloc agreement, effectively countered the rising influence of the anti-immigration far right Sweden Democrats, who has threatened a no-confidence vote.
Mattias Karlsson, the interim leader of the Sweden Democrats, was quoted by the Swedish television SVT as saying that, "We don't have any confidence in Lofven as Prime Minister." And he said the party will subject Lofven's government to a vote of no confidence, without giving a specific date.
The country faced a political crisis when Prime Minister Lofven announced earlier this month that he would call for early elections in March, after his minority government failed to get its budget through parliament.
The budget of Lofven's minority government, which pushes for more taxes and maintains the country's generous immigration policies, won 153 votes, while the opposition's budget got 182 votes.
The anti-immigration Swedish Democrats, which holds the balance of power in parliament after it became the third largest party in the September elections, chose to support the opposition budget and effectively failed Lofven's first budget in office.
The Sweden Democrats had threatened to bring down any government that did not curb rising immigration, and to turn an early election, the first of its kind in half a century, into a referendum on Sweden's liberal refugee policies.
With a population of about 9.6 million, Sweden has one of Europe's most liberal immigration policies. The Swedish official statistics showed earlier an estimated 127,000 immigrants were expected to come to Sweden in 2014, and up to 105,000 asylum seekers are expected in 2015.
