To be fair, the Swedish government fucked around and didn’t work out what the application process would be until months after everyone else in Europe, and finally passed the law in late 2020, when most people had more important things to worry about (i.e. Covid.)
In any event, the Withdrawal Agreement says “anyone who was resident before Brexit automatically retains all^* the rights they had”, and in principle if anyone ever questions those rights all you need to do is prove you were resident before the deadline. Many countries just left it at that - no registration process at all - but some countries (including the one I live in, thankfully not Sweden) did introduce registration processes as well because having a piece of paper or card saying “we recognise they were here before” just makes that “prove it” easier. But it is NOT required by the WA.
But that does not change the fact that if Sweden is deporting people who can prove they are beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement (i.e. were resident before Brexit), just because they didn’t do some paperwork, then Sweden is not honouring the agreement.
Which is a dick move, whatever you think of Brexit.
It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of beneficiaries of the agreement are not British - it’s the EU citizens who are permitted to live in the UK permanently on exactly the same basis. I’ll wager dollars to donuts there are a lot more Swedes resident in the UK than vice-versa, and guarantee a lot more EU citizens generally in the UK than vice-versa, and all Sweden is doing is giving a future UK government all the reason it needs to start breaking the agreement itself and start deporting. Just so a far-right government in Sweden can be seen to be tough on immigrants. Dick, dick move.
^*: Not quite ‘all’ - exceptions for rights that couldn’t be retained for constitutional reasons; for example I lost the right to buy land or bote because changing that would have required a constitutional amemdment/referendum, which is obviously impractical.
Read a bit more about it, and it seems that Sweden has deported significantly more than the average of the rest of the EU. Definitely seems like an intentional hardline approach.
Indeed. And they’re picking on the softest target they know - this thread is ample proof that nobody will step up to defend the British because Brexit was all our own fault, after all - just to pad the numbers out.
To be fair, the Swedish government fucked around and didn’t work out what the application process would be until months after everyone else in Europe, and finally passed the law in late 2020, when most people had more important things to worry about (i.e. Covid.)
In any event, the Withdrawal Agreement says “anyone who was resident before Brexit automatically retains all^* the rights they had”, and in principle if anyone ever questions those rights all you need to do is prove you were resident before the deadline. Many countries just left it at that - no registration process at all - but some countries (including the one I live in, thankfully not Sweden) did introduce registration processes as well because having a piece of paper or card saying “we recognise they were here before” just makes that “prove it” easier. But it is NOT required by the WA.
But that does not change the fact that if Sweden is deporting people who can prove they are beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement (i.e. were resident before Brexit), just because they didn’t do some paperwork, then Sweden is not honouring the agreement.
Which is a dick move, whatever you think of Brexit.
It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of beneficiaries of the agreement are not British - it’s the EU citizens who are permitted to live in the UK permanently on exactly the same basis. I’ll wager dollars to donuts there are a lot more Swedes resident in the UK than vice-versa, and guarantee a lot more EU citizens generally in the UK than vice-versa, and all Sweden is doing is giving a future UK government all the reason it needs to start breaking the agreement itself and start deporting. Just so a far-right government in Sweden can be seen to be tough on immigrants. Dick, dick move.
^*: Not quite ‘all’ - exceptions for rights that couldn’t be retained for constitutional reasons; for example I lost the right to buy land or bote because changing that would have required a constitutional amemdment/referendum, which is obviously impractical.
Read a bit more about it, and it seems that Sweden has deported significantly more than the average of the rest of the EU. Definitely seems like an intentional hardline approach.
Indeed. And they’re picking on the softest target they know - this thread is ample proof that nobody will step up to defend the British because Brexit was all our own fault, after all - just to pad the numbers out.
This is the core of it. Sweden Democrats (that was formed by neo-nazis) will welcome anything that makes the deportation numbers go up.