Sweden is close to reaching a deal with Romania to help the struggling country solve some of its most pressing social issues. The focus will be on children’s rights, the government’s special co-ordinator Martin Valfridsson told the Local on Thursday. A first draft of a so-called co-operation agreement to deal with issues surrounding some of Romania’s most vulnerable groups is currently being prepared by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, with the hope of the two governments penning a formal deal this summer.

• “It is not set in stone yet, but both countries have expressed an interest to initiate co-operation on social issues, particularly on children’s rights and education. Romania is very interested in how Sweden organizes its welfare system,” Valfridsson told The Local on Thursday.
  
• Romania’s minister for social affairs met with her Swedish counterparts Åsa Regnér and Annika Strandhäll in January to discuss potential co-operation between the two countries. And Regnér’s State Secretary Pernilla Baralt and Valfridsson, who is Sweden’s national co-ordinator for the work with vulnerable people in Europe, have just returned from a trip to Bucharest to follow up on the talks.
  
• “It feels like we can talk about both complicated and tough issues. The goal now is to create a more long term and wider framework for our future discussions. The plan is to be able to sign the agreement this summer,” Baralt told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet on Thursday.
  
• “Romania is a rather poor country, consisting of many smaller municipalities with far fewer resources than in Sweden. There is a lot of improvement potential in social issues, to put it diplomatically, but there is also an ambition to get better at dealing with them,” Valfridsson explained. 
  
• Thousands of beggars have arrived in Sweden over the past few years, with ninety percent of them travelling from Romania, according to figures released by Stockholm’s Social Administration Board in April 2014.
  
• Most of them are members of the Roma community – one of the EU’s largest minority groups – and arrive as EU tourists fleeing poverty under the right to Freedom of Movement. Many end up on the street. In February dozens of Roma beggars were evicted from a city square in Stockholm amid rising concern about the growing number of beggars in the Swedish capital. (see also: Twenty beggars evicted)
  
• “In the long run this could be one of the effects. If you’ve got a good life in your own country you are less likely to travel to another. It’s one piece of the puzzle,“ he said. 
  

Meanwhile, one in two Swedes now wants to ban begging.

• The opinion poll, conducted during the last week in March, asked 1,198 Swedes the question: “is the it a good or bad idea to ban begging?”
  
• Of those, 49 percent said it was a good idea.
  
• When the same question was asked in September last year, 36 percent answered in the affirmative.
  
• The percentage against a ban also sank from 46 percent in September to 36 percent in the recent poll.
  
• It does not appear that the Aftonbladet poll was an outlier. A similar survey conducted by Novus Group for Sweden’s TT news agency in early March found that 56 percent supported a begging ban.
  
• But Prime Minister Stefan Löfven told Aftonbladet that a ban was not something his government was considering.
  
• “Legislating against poverty is a waste of time,” he said.
  
• Norway’s government dropped a plan to ban begging in early February after strong pushback from Norwegian opposition parties and rights campaigners around the globe.
  
• That legislation would have banned both begging and "cooperation” with beggars. Penalties would have included fines or up to a year in jail. The minority right-wing government had linked begging to rising crime rates.
  
• But rights groups described the proposed law as draconian and against Nordic traditions of tolerance.