A Loyal Rookie? The Sweden Democrats’ First Year in the European Parliament

In the 2014 election, the Eurosceptic and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) for the first time entered the European Parliament. The article first sheds light on the question of why the SD ended up in the EFDD parliamentary party group with a discussion of both the history of the party and its stance on some of the most important issues. In order to assess what inclusion in the EFDD has meant in regard to its behaviour, analysis of roll call data is presented. The results indicate that the SD tends to vote similarly to UKIP. Moreover, and surprisingly, the coherence between the SD and the Danish People’s Party is very low, indicating that group membership is more important than political affinity for the SD in deciding on its voting stance in the EP.