Charlotta Mellander: "All Sweden shall live" is a platitude

- I can think that you got away too easily with saying "the whole of Sweden shall live". It is clear that it is a nice thought, but the whole country is not alive today and will live even less in the future. I think that then just repeating platitudes indicates that you don't take the problems seriously, she says.

In the last 10-15 years, she has visited around 250 of Sweden's 290 municipalities and has seen in several places the same pattern as in northern Värmland. Young people who choose to move to cities for education or work raise the average age and reduce childbearing, while few outsiders choose to move there.

- This also erodes purchasing power and the basis for running things like school and healthcare. Many of these places will have a hard time in the future, no doubt.

"The problems will not go away"

How the development should be responded to from a political point of view is complicated, says Charlotta Mellander. She believes that by definition it is not fairer to distribute resources from cities to sparsely populated areas, nor is it desirable for politicians to decide where people should live.

- But politics can play a role by, for example, deciding what type of public service must be available. You can regulate how far it must be to the nearest school, for example, and adjust which authorizations are required, review digital solutions and so on.

She calls for more specific political discussion to make it clearer for the voters before the election, but also to specify what people in sparsely populated areas should be able to expect in terms of, for example, school and care.

- And you probably have to try to find new solutions to the problems, because they won't go away, says Charlotta Mellander.