Löfven II Cabinet 2019–2021
Social Democrat–Green minority coalition (S+MP) under Stefan Löfven, formed after the longest government-formation crisis in modern Swedish history (134 days). Built on the 73-point Januariavtalet with C and L, governed Sweden through the COVID-19 pandemic, and ended in June 2021 by the first successful no-confidence vote against a sitting Swedish prime minister.
The Löfven II Cabinet, headed by Stefan Löfven, took office on 21 January 2019 after the longest government-formation crisis in modern Swedish history — 134 days following the September 2018 election. Same S+MP composition as before. Magdalena Andersson continued as finance minister; Margot Wallström handed the foreign-affairs brief to Ann Linde in September 2019; Morgan Johansson stayed as justice minister.
The cabinet’s parliamentary basis was the Januariavtalet — a 73-point policy pact signed with Centerpartiet and Liberalerna, pushing the cabinet’s economic programme notably to the right in exchange for blocking the Sweden Democrats from formal influence. The pact fundamentally broke traditional bloc politics — a Social Democrat–Green cabinet governing on a programme negotiated with two centre-right parties was unprecedented in postwar Sweden.
The cabinet then absorbed the COVID-19 pandemic — short-term furlough schemes (korttidspermittering), expanded unemployment benefits, transition support for businesses, hundreds of billions of SEK in aggregate. The Coronakommissionen (SOU 2022:10) was appointed to evaluate the response.
The end came at midsummer 2021. Vänsterpartiet withdrew passive support over a proposal to introduce market rents on newly built apartments, and on 21 June 2021 the Riksdag voted yes on a misstroendeförklaring against Löfven — the first successful no-confidence vote against a sitting Swedish prime minister. Löfven requested formal dismissal on 28 June, and the brief transitional Löfven III Cabinet followed.