made Sweden famous. He’s already hit stumbling blocks. His center-right Alliance Party took charge in October, and Reinfeldt hoped to quickly stamp his administration with the “work first” clarion call of his election campaign. In its early weeks the new government was distracted by a series of relatively minor scandals, including tax irregularities that beset several cabinet ministers. Reinfeldt remains determined. He spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Stryker McGuire in Stockholm recently. Excerpts:

Reinfeldt: Well, the minister for Labor is actually the one doing it, but, yes, we like to think that the Alliance has taken over as the party that values work. We want to send that message.

Exactly. We needed a broader policy for job creation. We have a society divided into thirds. Two thirds take part in the productivity-driven society that we see in Sweden and other competitive countries. But one third or so [of Swedes] are standing aside and living on subsidies–“bystanders” who have excluded themselves from the labor force in one way or another. Basically, what the Swedish electorate said is [that] there are too many bystanders.

We needed to shift away from an old center-right view of just lowering taxes for high-income earners. So we said, “No, it’s the other way around. Yes, reduce taxes, but reduce them for low-income earners.” Then we reshaped the benefits systems so that they [help] the short-term unemployed, but are not a lifelong way of giving the unemployed nearly the same amount of money they would get if they had a job. To encourage hiring the long-term unemployed, we are reducing the “employer’s fee” in those cases–the so-called wage tax that an employer pays to the government for each employee.

You can divide the public sector in Sweden in two. One half of it is the health-care system, the education system, care for the elderly, day care for children–things like that. That is all deeply rooted in Sweden, and very much appreciated. The only question is, is it good enough? I don’t see any reductions there. I might even increase spending in some areas, like hospitals. The other part of the public sector are the benefits systems for unemployment and everything else. There I am much more critical … and that’s where the cuts will be made.

After World War II, people who immigrated to Sweden from countries like Yugoslavia and Hungary came here to work. In the 1970s, this shifted. We took a view [in Sweden] that immigrants were a burden that we took upon ourselves, that we should be kind to these people and that we should provide for them–not give them opportunities, not give them the value of working themselves. We gave them subsidies. This was dysfunctional–for the economy and for society. [Many young immigrants] see only the doors that are shut. They feel Swedish society is shutting them out. That’s why we need a job-creation program. Any society that can’t provide for the people living there will start to see people moving out. We saw that. Between 1870 and 1890, 1 million Swedes left for America. We were poor.

We will have open doors. We won’t have a [waiting period] of a few years. In my view, a lot of European countries are having the wrong discussion. It’s very much: How should we close down our economies? How should we keep people out? I think we are close to the other perspective: How should we attract people? How should we, in a growing economy, actually make room for more people? Demographically, it is very clear that we will need this.

My country is pro-enlargement. Don’t stop the process. Keep the negotiations alive. The forces in Turkey who want to see a European-style Turkey–democracy, market economy–cannot survive if the EU were to take down the process and, you know, push Turkey into the Middle East, into the Muslim world and away from Europe. We have a historic opportunity to take them in. Their project for a hundred years has been to set up a European-style state. For me, they are definitely a welcome part of the EU.