Företagarna creates better conditions for starting, running, developing, and owning a business in Sweden. Our mission is to promote entrepreneurship, safeguard the rights of business owners, and contribute to a climate in which running a business is easy and appealing.
Being an entrepreneur should be simple and it should be worth the effort. Företagarna's watchwords are free trade and free competition. Our goal is for Sweden to regain its former position as one of the most entrepreneur-friendly countries in the world.

We are not a political party. Företagarna is critical of all parties that do not support the policies we want and we cooperate with everyone who favors policies that favor entrepreneurs. We talk to everybody – government ministers and the opposition, unions and organizations - everyone who is intent on working toward a better entrepreneurial climate and who does not merely deliver empty promises.

Although all political parties in Sweden are in favor of entrepreneurship in theory, far too little is being done to promote entrepreneurship and create more jobs. We want to change that! One of our most important tasks is to clarify the correlations between entrepreneurship, growth, and prosperity.

Företagarna is the largest organization for business owners in Sweden and we represent some 55,000 directly affiliated entrepreneurs and 21 industry associations. Our members are entrepreneurs who own their own businesses or who support our work.

Our work is performed out there in the trenches with owners of businesses small and large all over Sweden. That approach gives us a clear picture of what is important to making life easier for Sweden’s business owners and entrepreneurs.

Did you know?
Not one of the 50 largest companies in Sweden was founded after 1970
The public sector employs as many people as all small businesses in Sweden put together
99.2% of Swedish companies have fewer than 50 employees
3 out of 4 entrepreneurs run the company alone
12% of Swedish business owners are immigrants
More than 20% of Swedish business owners are women

Our achievements in 2005
Inheritance and Gift Tax were abolished as of 1 January 2005. With our report “Who wants to take over?” we were the ones who put the generation change in companies on the agenda. We see the abolition of these taxes as a major victory.
The Swedish Government has issued a 300-point proposal aimed at simplifying dealings between business owners and government agencies.
We managed to save the small business exemption in the Swedish Employment Protection Act in 2005 as well. We are opposing the deleterious changes in labour law, such as the legal right to full-time employment, currently being considered by the government.

Other issues we are still addressing
Make it easy to start and run a business
Abolish employer co-financing of national health insurance
Change labour law: the priority exemption in the Employment Protection Act should be expanded to apply to everyone
Reduce employer liability
Abolish the 3:12 rule regarding taxation of business owners
Extend the remittance period for VAT
Abolish the 100-day period in which unemployed persons are not required to accept jobs that are not near their home or in the field in which they were trained
Prohibit union actions against those that do not have collective agreements
Revamp the costly and inefficient labour market policy
Improve conditions for financing growing companies
Improve and expand cooperative ventures and other opportunities within the EU 
 Make it possible to operate a professional service market
Stop changes for the worse for small businesses