My home country Austria and Sweden have a lot in common. Both countries were once – more or less – huge empires shaping the history of Europe, sometimes battling each other like in the 30 year war. We both were relegated to become small and rather unimportant countries on the periphery of the iron courtain, but managed somehow to find themselves in top the richtest countries in the world by means of a highly consensus oriented, corporatist system with the highest living standards in a welfare state. Both countries called themselves politically neutral until recently. We aligned ourselves with other Nordic states, Switzerland and Liechtenstein in the European Free Trade Association before we finally joined the European Union together with Finland in 1995. Whereas Austria was under pressure to declare everlasting neutrality by the winning nations of WW2 – mainly the Soviets – Sweden chose to be neutral until Russia decided to go to war in again in the heart of Europe. They joined NATO together with Finland, whilst Austria still thinks it is neutral and can talk others out of being the bad guys. At least if they would listen eventually.

But let us talk about Sweden and not about my geopolitical frustrations. Of course there are differences, too. First the religion. Whereas most of Austrians still call their home a catholic country, the Swedes are fiercly protestant and it shows. The mentality of Austrians and Swedes are very different. Like North & South. Still, both countries are economically successful export-oriented nations.