‘Absurd, hardline calls’: questions over Sweden’s post-Brexit migration policy

Original article by Lisa O’Carroll in Stockholm

He arrived with nothing other than the clothes he wore that morning. Hours later he was banged up in a detention centre close to a Stockholm airport to await deportation.

Charles, a former business director from Cambridge, who did not want his full name published, moved to Sweden in 2017 to be with his Swedish wife, Lily, and applied to remain after Brexit, before the deadline of December 2021.

But the migration agency rejected his application, and he and his wife have been fighting with the Swedish authorities ever since.

In a message passed on by Lily, he said he was the only Briton in the detention centre, where he described being hemmed in by three lines of fences separated by a “no man’s land”.

“I arrived here with nothing apart from the clothes I had on,” Charles said. “We were told the meeting … with the border police was to discuss my case. They then said they thought I would abscond, which is why they were going to detain me.”

Lily, a lawyer, questioned whether Sweden, considered a global leader in human rights and progressive politics, was now like Afghanistan. “They have hunted us for five years,” she said.

Charles could be deported in the next week unless his latest legal challenge delivers a reprieve.

He joins a list of 2,490 Britons – of an estimated 14,000 in Sweden – deported from the country between 2020 and 2025, as questions are mounting as to why Sweden appears to have taken such a hardline approach to the Brexit withdrawal agreement (WA) over migration.

In total, Sweden is responsible for 33% of all British nationals deported from the EU between 2021 and 2025, compared with France, which accounted for 6% of all British deportees, Spain at 3% and Germany at 2%. France deported 450, Spain 250 and Germany 160, while Italy deported just 15 Britons in that period.

Different countries collate data in different ways, but Eurostat data suggests the Netherlands is another outlier, with 2,270 Britons deported in the same period.

Data shows 2,100 removal orders were also issued in Sweden, though it is not clear how many of these resulted in voluntary departures or progressed to deportations.

People served with removal orders include Joyce Thomas, a 78-year-old widow who has been in Sweden for 22 years, and George Mason, a 74-year-old with dementia who has been in Sweden for 25 years, both of whose applications missed the deadline to apply to remain in Sweden post-Brexit.

John Sellers, a 34-year-old Briton who has lived in Sweden since he was 10, was deported in January.

The cases also raise the question of whether the WA delivers the political promise made by the Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and others promising citizens should not be collateral damage of Brexit.

“The level of protection afforded under EU law must not be watered down. Brexit should not alter the nature of people’s daily lives,” Barnier said in 2017.

Nine years on, some have asked if Sweden’s approach has been infected by its apparent lurch to the right more broadly, serving deportations on children and even a 95-year-old Iraqi woman who had lived in Sweden for 20 years.

“The number of absurd, hardline calls from the migration department just keeps piling up,” the Swedish author and journalist Martin Gelin wrote this week ahead of the general election on Sunday.

British citizens who lived in the country before Brexit have unique protection under the WA, but activists have noted that they appear to be subject to the same treatment as other foreign nationals.

“The question is, has national migration policy affected the way in which they apply the withdrawal agreement in edge cases? And has it affected the culture in Migrationsverket [the migration agency] and perhaps in the courts as they apply the withdrawal agreement?” asked James Savage, the editor of the Local, which recently revealed the pressure applied to Sweden by the European Commission.

Family members acting on behalf of Mason turned to the general migration route for residency after the migration agency rejected the withdrawal agreement request for him to remain in the country. The judge’s ruling was clear: “The state’s interest in regulated immigration outweighs Horace [George] Mason’s interest in continuing to reside [in Sweden].”

Since the surge in publicity surrounding deportations of British citizens in Sweden, all three opposition parties have pledged new laws to reopen the application process for Britons, and the incumbent government has said it would look at doing the same.

Niels Paarup-Petersen, the migration spokesperson for the Centre party, has promised new laws if his party retains power. “Some of these cases are just stupid,” he told the Guardian. “They [the migration agency] should not be lenient, but the present decision-making leans towards deportation.”

The Swedish migration agency insists it has only deported 458 British people in strict Brexit-related cases but activists – who have been trying to get granular detail on the remaining cases – say that data may not include Britons who upon rejection from the agency then applied to stay under different routes and ended up with deportation orders.

The agency also says there is “no indication that Sweden has in any way interpreted the withdrawal agreement in an extreme manner or differently from other [EU] member states” and that it has “applied applicable law” with appeal processes.

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Savage notes that promises to change the law were made three years ago after other cases emerged.

David Milstead, who runs the activist group Brits in Sweden, has welcomed promises of action but is concerned that politicians might provide a fix for future British applicants without giving a second chance to those already deported or who have left voluntarily.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said: “Correct implementation of the withdrawal agreement is very important to us,” but added: “Reasonable grounds that may justify a late application for beneficiary status are not defined in the withdrawal agreement.”

This means “host states have a certain margin of discretion in deciding what they accept as reasonable grounds”.

In other words, Sweden has not breached the withdrawal agreement but rather is exercising allowable discretion.

Catherine Barnard, a professor of EU law at Cambridge University, says the withdrawal agreement is “unique”, as no other member state has ever left the EU, and will take time to test. But decisions by migration authorities have to be proven to be “proportionate”.

While Swedish courts have not referred their decision-making upwards to the European court of justice, Barnard says a case in the UK may provide precedent for EU citizens affected by the WA.

In the case of “CG”, the European court of justice ruled that the UK breached the EU charter of fundamental rights in denying benefits to an EU citizen in Northern Ireland.

“In a 2021 case … the court ruled that the charter would apply to those who had moved to another member state before Brexit and lived there,” Barnard said.

“While the facts of the case were somewhat different, the principle should remain: the state’s interest in protecting its immigration must be balanced against the rights to family life of vulnerable individuals.”

The Swedish migration authorities and police have been approached for comment on the detention of Charles.