FES-Analyse: Schweden conditions and labour protection regulations. Unions administer the unemployment insurance system. 5. Women work as much as men. Policies are designed to help combine parenthood with working life. Good quality public childcare centres are open all day at a maximum fee of 1260 SEK (135€) per child and month or 3% of household income(reduced to 2% for the second and 1% for the third child). Parents can remain at home with their child for a total of 13 months at 80% of a salary, to a maximum of 874 SEK(94€) per day. No parent can take more than 11 months of parental leave which means that the father usually stays at home for at least two. Tax financed and indeed 5 costly at 1% of GDP, the parental leave system delivers more gender equality and therefore a high employment ratio. 6. It is profitable to be green. With early policies for energy efficiency and despite high growth during the last decade, emissions of greenhouse gases are lower than in 1990. Market growth for green products goes hand in hand with public investments in researching and developing new technologies, green fees and tax incentives. As users of green fuels pay a lower tax rate, benefit from free parking in the inner city of Stockholm and pay no road tolls, the number of bi-fuel cars has exploded. Still the people chose change Parliamentary elections results, 17 September 2007: Party Votes% ’New’ Moderates(m) 26.2 Centre Party(c) 7.9 Liberals(fp) 7.5 Christian Democrats(kd) 6.6 Alliance government 48.2 Social Democrats(s) 35 Left Party(v) 5.8 Green Party(mp) 5.2 Centre-left opposition 46.1 Other parties 5.7 Total 100 Change on 2002 +11 +1.7 -5.8 -2.6 +4.2 -4.9 -2.5 +0.6 -6.8 +2.5 ­Seats 97 29 28 24 178 130 22 19 171 ­349 Women seats % 43.3 37.9 50.0 37.5 42.7 50.0 63.6 52.6 52.0 ­47.3 The four-party Alliance was uncommonly successful in winning a majority, as such governments are very unusual in Sweden and all coalitions have been short-lived. The Moderates got the biggest electoral increase in votes ever for a Swedish party. Their defeat in 2002, having campaigned on drastic tax cuts and‘system change’, paved the way for a new leadership profiling the Moderates(a name from an earlier period of modernisation) as‘the new labour party’ in explicit admiration for British New Labour. Most of these votes were captured from Allied parties, especially the Liberals who, curiously, had moved to the right along with the Centre party. Swedish elections are usually decided by small shifts between the two‘blocks’, while more voters move within blocks. This time the Social Democrats lost directly to the Moderates, getting their lowest result since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1921.