Alf Robert Olof Svensson (born 1 October 1938) is a Swedish politician and Member of the European Parliament from 2009. Alf was the leader of the Christian Democrats in Sweden between 1973 and 3 April 2004. He was a Member of Parliament from 1985 to 1988 and again from 1991 until his election to the European Parliament in 2009. Between 1991 and 1994 he was Minister for Development Cooperation in the liberal-conservative Cabinet led by Prime Minister Carl Bildt.

Alf Svensson was educated as a teacher, and worked as teacher in Swedish and history at a school in Huskvarna from 1963 to 1973.

He was a member of the Christian Democrats from its foundation in 1964, and was one of the founders of its youth wing, Young Christian Democrats, in 1966, and was its chairman from 1970 to 1973. In 1973 he became the leader of the party, after its first leader Birger Ekstedt had died in 1972.

In the 1985 elections, the Christian Democrats, who had so far not won any parliamentary representation, entered into an election alliance with Centre Party. This gave Alf Svensson a seat in parliament, which made him the first Christian Democrat MP, but he was the only person of his party who received a seat, which was a disappoinment for the party. In the 1988 elections, the alliance had been dissolved, and the Christian Democrats failed to get enough votes to enter the parliament on their own. In the 1991 elections, they managed to get into parliament, and Svensson received a ministerial post in the four-party coalition government under Carl Bildt.

Hans Göran Persson (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈʝœːran ˈpæːʂɔn]) (born 20 January 1949) was the Prime Minister of Sweden from 1996 to 2006 and the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1996 to 2007. He was Minister for Finance from 1994 to 1996.

Conceding defeat in the September 2006 general election, he announced that he would resign as party leader, and Mona Sahlin was elected to succeed him as party leader in March 2007. Since August 2007 he has worked as a part time corporate lobbyist for the JKL Group.^{[citation needed]}

Persson was born in Vingåker in Södermanland, Sweden, in a working-class home. He has in recent years revealed that he wanted to become a priest as a young man; however, he applied to the college in Örebro where he took courses in social science (mainly sociology). He completed 80 college credits (120 ECTS credits) in the subject before he left the college in 1971 without graduating. According to himself he had at the time almost completed an education in social and political sciences.^{[citation needed]} As the college later received credentials as a full university, the renamed Örebro University gave him an honorary PhD in medicine in February 2005, an award that provoked some controversy.