The wife of a British man detained by police in Stockholm on Tuesday ahead of a threatened deportation has pleaded with Andy Burnham to get involved in the Brexit catastrophe unfolding for many British citizens in Sweden.
Charles, who does not want to be fully identified, and his Swedish wife, Lily, were summoned to the police station at 10am on Tuesday, where he was told he would be held at a detention centre and deported within the next two weeks.
Lily, who is a lawyer, was told to go home and get his passport despite her protests that there was a court process under way appealing the deportation order.
“I feel shame,” said Lily, who asked that their family’s surname not be published.
“To me, Britain represents freedom for human beings, and then to see this British man in detention just because he wants to be with his wife and live in his house, this is not right.
“What kind of country are we living in? Is this civilisation? They don’t care about human rights. This is a European country, but it looks like Sweden is like somewhere like Afghanistan,” she said.
Lily met her husband in the UK after starting a law degree in London in 2010.
She now works for the local authority in Stockholm and returned to Sweden in 2015, with her soon-to-be husband joining her in 2017, three years before Brexit.
A former business consultant, now retired, Charles made an application to remain in the country before the deadline for applications after Brexit.
His application was rejected two years later in 2022 and the family have been fighting deportation ever since with “six or seven” appeals, said Lily. “The Migration Agency has hunted us for five years.”
During the summer the couple received a text asking them to show up at their local police station on 1 September.
“They told us they needed to talk and we should show up at 10am. They didn’t say anything about deportation or to bring passports.
“When we arrived they told us that they needed to talk to Charles privately, and after three hours they told me they were taking him to the detention centre and that they would deport him.
“I told them that they can’t do this because his case is in court and they have to wait for the outcome, but they told me they were going ahead,” said Lily.
She has pleaded with Andy Burnham, the UK prime minister, to intervene.
“Why can’t Andy Burnham talk to the Swedish government? How many British families have to suffer in Sweden before Andy Burnham gets involved? How many families have to leave their homes, be forced into selling their houses?
“This is not humanity. This is not right. They should threaten the trade agreement,” she added.
Charles’s case comes amid growing controversy over Sweden’s approach to the withdrawal agreement, which is supposed to have protected EU citizens in the UK and British citizens settled in the bloc before Brexit.
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Among those threatened with removal in the past month are 78-year-old British widow Joyce Thomas, who has been in the country for 21 years, and George Mason, a 74-year-old man in dementia care who has been in the country for 24 years.
A 34-year-old man revealed this week he was deported from Sweden in January despite having been in the country since he was 10 and being married to a Swedish woman in Gothenburg.
Two years ago another British woman, Kathleen Poole, was threatened with deportation because she had not provided financial statements to the Migration Agency while in full-time dementia care.
The Swedish migration minister defended the country’s implementation of the withdrawal agreement, saying the Migration Agency was following the rules and had granted a number of residency permits for Britons who had “reasonable grounds” for late applications.
However, concerns have been raised formally by the UK government through the EU-UK specialised committee, the official platform to raise issues over the working out of the Brexit deal, over the high number of late applications for post Brexit residency being rejected.
Sweden, along with 12 other EU member states, opted for a constitutive system requiring citizens to formally apply to extend their residency rights post Brexit. Others, like Spain, opted for a declaratory system requiring Britons to simply register their presence initially.
Lily says she and her husband phoned the authorities and used the correct form for residency and have been fighting ever since.
The latest statistics from the 2024 European Commission annual report show that 14,233 applications for post Brexit residency have been decided in Sweden.
According to analysis by the UK government, 27.5% (3,918) of applications have been refused, “a refusal rate three times higher than any other member state and considerably higher than the EU average of between 3 and 4%”.
Sources added that this “constitutes 12% of all refusals across the EU member states, even though UK nationals in Sweden makes up only 1.55% of the total population of WA beneficiaries in EU member states”.
Denmark faced a similar controversy two years ago, but legislation was introduced to give British nationals a second chance to make the residency application.
