A vitriolic row between the Prime Ministers of Sweden and Hungary has broken out on social media after Viktor Orbán asserted that 280 Swedish underage girls had been arrested for gangland murders, a claim he based on reporting by the German newspaper Die Welt.
Orbán had posted a video purporting that Swedish criminal gangs were coercing underage girls to murder on their behalf.
Responding on X, Swedish PM Ulf Kristersson called the Hungarian PM’s allegations “outrageous lies”, albeit unsurprising since they came “from the man who is dismantling the rule of law in his own country”, someone who “is desperate“ ahead of Hungary’s upcoming election.
Orbán had questioned the Stockholm government’s right to lecture Hungary “about the rule of law“ in light of the Die Welt account of how “criminal networks are exploiting Swedish children as killers, knowing the system won’t convict.“
With more and more teenage girls being recruited in Sweden by gangs to commit crimes, Sweden’s ruling coalition is now considering lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 13 years, the newspaper claimed. Last year, some 280 underage girls reportedly were investigated for murder, manslaughter or violent crimes.
The gangs – mainly young men from migrant backgrounds – reportedly aim to take control of the drug market.
Sweden’s Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer had previously warned that the involvement of young girls in criminal circles is far more common than had been assumed.
Stockholm has been a vociferous critic of Hungary’s rule of law approach to a range of issues, most recently its ban on an LGBTQ+ pride march.
It was Hungary, along with Türkiye, that held up Sweden’s NATO accession for almost two years when it applied to join the alliance following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sweden eventually joined NATO last year, after the Hungarian parliament finally ratified its application.
