He calls Wednesday's message from the government and the Sweden Democrats historic.
I was critical of the defense decision made in December, where there was a smaller increase. And it's basically the same thing throughout Europe, until February one hoped that it would resolve itself with the USA. But this is what we need to do to prepare ourselves for Europe defending itself without the USA.
According to the government, NATO's new goal will likely land between 3-4 percent of GDP, and then Sweden should also be at that level. A clear message is expected at the NATO summit this summer.
If it becomes 3.3, Sweden might go down, and if it becomes 3.7, one might go up.
3.5 reasonable
Having 3.5 percent as a preliminary goal is reasonable, according to Jonsson.
Especially if the USA sets a hard requirement and says that it requires x amount of money, then the USA's defense budget is at 3.4 or 3.5 percent. So as a small NATO ally, I think one thinks that if one is north of the USA, it's "fine".
The governing parties have also agreed to allocate 25 billion kronor this year to quickly purchase new defense equipment, funds that are part of the loan financing.
Even this was, according to Jonsson, a necessary decision and enables so-called "opportunistic purchases".
What we often do instead is to place large orders to develop our own, large weapon systems that take an extremely long time. While there is more "sense of urgency" in this, to authorize here and now to go to the market.
Air defense and artillery
Prioritized in the short term are, among other things, air defense, rocket artillery, and drones, he says.
The investment that came in the air defense in the defense decision was very limited, so I would see that as a high priority.
However, there are major bottlenecks in the industry, he says.
And it gets even worse due to the fact that there is now a major turnaround, where one becomes very suspicious of buying American after they shut off intelligence and capabilities to Ukraine.
The European defense industry has not built out factories in the way that would have been required to meet demand.
So there is a major bottleneck on the defense industrial market, which only increases the importance of the possibility of making opportunistic purchases, says Oscar Jonsson.
Corrected: In an earlier version, there was an incorrect statement about the financing.
