Response to interpellation 2025/26:564 on changes to the constitution

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Madam Speaker! Thank you, Elsa Widding, for the opportunity to discuss constitutional issues here in the interval between the summer and autumn sessions. It always feels good.

The question concerns whether I have made any analysis of how democracy is affected when a minority is able to block a decision that almost two-thirds of the members of the Riksdag want to implement. She has also asked me if I have taken into account any concrete risks or historical examples in the decision to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments, and if I can, in that case, account for these, as well as whether I have made any analysis of the possibilities for Sweden to leave the EU if the constitutional amendment is implemented.

Let us begin with the constitutional laws, which regulate the principles of the constitutional system and are also central to our democracy. When it comes to amendments to the constitution, it has long been required to have two identical parliamentary decisions with an intervening election. That requirement is intended to prevent hasty changes to the constitution.

The special decision-making procedure for constitutional amendments has functioned well and has entailed a special protection for the constitutional laws. That protection has been reinforced by the fact that among the parliamentary parties there has been a consensus on the importance of a broad parliamentary anchoring specifically regarding constitutional amendments. This attitude has resulted in that constitutional amendments in the vast majority of cases have also been carried out with the support of broad majorities in the Riksdag.

At the same time, there are no formal obstacles today against proposals being adopted with a simple majority. There are therefore no guarantees against a slim parliamentary majority on its own changing central parts of the content of the constitutional laws for the purpose of strengthening its own power position or in other ways benefiting its own political direction. We have seen experiences in other countries showing that democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of civil liberties and rights can come under pressure.

This was the background for why a unanimous parliamentary committee submitted a proposal to introduce a requirement for a qualified majority for decisions on changing the constitution – at that time, all eight parties in the Riksdag stood behind the proposal in the committee. The requirement for a qualified majority provides formal support for the view that has, in practice, already been applied in Sweden for a long time.

A requirement for a qualified majority for constitutional amendments implies, to some extent, a limitation on the possibility for the will of the people to prevail. But that requirement can be justified based on the interest of strengthening the protection of democracy. The constitutional laws contain rules that need to be more stable than ordinary legislation – where there are strong reasons to consider the interests and views of the minority. This concerns, among other things, the foundations of our system of government, the functioning of democracy, and the protection of fundamental freedoms and rights.

The proposed requirement for a qualified majority applies only at the second, confirming parliamentary decision. The decision to adopt a constitutional amendment as pending can therefore continue to be made by a simple parliamentary majority. Such a design means that the parliamentary majority is not prevented from taking initiative for reforms that it considers necessary. Before the intervening election, there is then an opportunity to raise these issues in the public debate and build a popular opinion in support of changing the constitutions.

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Elsa Widding (-)

Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister.

So, this is about a new requirement for quorum and qualified majority for constitutional amendments. The Government also wants the scope of the Council for Legislation's review to be expanded. Proposals for the constitution regarding fundamental freedoms and rights, especially Chapter 2 of the Instrument of Government, shall then be referred to the Council for Legislation, if I have understood that correctly. Just Chapter 2 of the Instrument of Government concerns our personal freedoms and rights, i.e., those that the government was keen to limit during the covid pandemic.

There is reason to feel a certain concern here. I wish for us to look up a bit. I would like to raise the question that I hope the Speaker, the Minister, the Government, and all colleagues who are not here in the Riksdag today consider to be fundamental for our society, our nation, and Sweden as a constitutional state. It is about the importance of preserving, that is, protecting, our democratic order via Sweden's constitution.

In our currently most important constitution, the Instrument of Government, the purpose is formulated. All public power in Sweden derives from the people. This means that it is the will of the people that shall be guiding for all decisions in Sweden's Riksdag. The purpose is to protect us citizens from political and other abuses.

The government writes on its website:

"We are the country that believes in equality, gender equality and in children's unique rights, which exports both special steel and pop music all over the world, where the common welfare is built on millions of individual efforts – and where everyone who wants can experience the dizzying sense of freedom that our waters, forests and mountains provide. It is Sweden!"

It sounds fantastic, but the question is whether this is really what the government wants.

In prop. 2024/25:165, a constitutional amendment is described which means that the law is changed so that a minority shall be able to block a decision that almost two-thirds of the members of the Riksdag want to implement.

Many with me are concerned today about the policy that both the sitting government and the previous government have pursued since we joined the EU. Many with me are also very disappointed with the direction that membership in the EU has taken. We voted for peace, freedom, justice, democracy and free trade but are now getting something completely different.

The EU today does not strive for peace and freedom. It is precisely the opposite. The EU's leadership is pushing for a conflict between the EU's member states and Russia. The EU's leadership wants war. The EU's leadership ignores the fact that our sons will soon be sent away to never return. The EU and Sweden advocate for an armed conflict and do not lift a finger to broker peace with our neighbor in the east.

Of course, every armed conflict feeds the defense industry and makes a few people very rich. But it also costs lives and results in shattered families and lost property. Enormous sums of our common capital are lost.

How did this happen? That is the question. Who decided that the EU should change direction from, as the first point in its declaration, standing for peace to inciting a conflict with the world's leading nuclear power, which we are now making ourselves a target for?

Through our membership in Nato, we end up even more in the wrong boat – not to mention the DCA agreement, where we even surrender Swedish territory to a foreign military power.

Now I come to the final point. I am thinking about the possibility that a small group of members, a minority, in Sweden's Riksdag could go against the democratic will of the majority, which is what is being discussed here. Does it not then open up the possibility that a few members, who one could call coup plotters, who are controlled by supranational organizations – Nato, EU or why not WHO – can push through an agenda that would not be approved with the existing constitution, which the government now wants to change?

What is the government actually after with this proposal for a reformulation of the constitution and the expansion of the Council of Legislation's scope of review? Is this not about the EU and about the fact that we will never be able to get out of the EU – with all that the EU has caused for Sweden?

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Madam Speaker! I thought I would nevertheless ask to stick to the constitutional issues. I can only, for the sake of the matter, still point out that there were quite a few bizarre claims, from my point of view, from Elsa Widding regarding the EU as some kind of driving force for a conflict with Russia. It is Putin who has started a war against Ukraine, first by occupying Crimea and then by opening up for a full-scale attack against Ukraine, which is a democratic state governed by the rule of law. Let me just say that it is a completely separate debate. But I am truly on the opposite side in relation to Elsa Widding on that question.

Regarding the constitutional, I just want to say that this is an expression of a fairly fundamental view of democracy. Democracy is not synonymous with that 51 percent of the population at any given time has the right to do whatever they want in relation to the 49.

The protection of freedom and rights that Elsa Widding, at least as I understood it, appreciated in some part of her post is an expression of the fact that a majority is not allowed to do whatever it wants in relation to individual individuals. It is a limitation of, so to speak, this with the will of the people, if by that we mean that 51 percent should be able to do whatever they want with the 49. The protection of freedom and rights is, therefore, already an expression of that.

If one looks at our constitutional laws in general, one sees that there are other restrictive rules. Take, for example, EU membership – because it concerns delegating administrative tasks to another country. It was the same principle that applied when we now entered into an agreement with Estonia regarding the rental of accommodation places, because it concerns delegating or handing over administrative tasks, the exercise of public authority, to another country. Yes, in that case, a three-quarters majority is required here in the Riksdag.

Is it an expression of an anti-democratic view? No, it is an expression that the democratic constitutional state is built on checks and balances, power and counter-power. It is about a balance between individual freedom and rights protection and the will of the people. It is about a balance between, on one hand, a simple majority's possibilities to do what it wants in relation to countries outside Sweden's borders and, on the other hand, the broad public's interest in not, for example, being able to send out the exercise of authority to other countries without there being a broad consensus here in the Riksdag.

One can say that our democracy, our democratic rule of law, already is built on such a balance. There are minority protection rules here in the Riksdag which mean that one must postpone certain decisions for a certain period. It is not undemocratic. It is about a minority having to be able to create inertia, so to speak, in the processes in certain respects.

Regarding the question of two-thirds, I think it became a good balance. I truly stand behind it, so I have no problem being described as the minister who wants to do this. I still want to emphasize that it was a constitutionally composed constitutional law investigation in which all parties in the Riksdag were involved – parties which, as far as I know, have different levels of warmth in their relationship to the EU cooperation, the NATO cooperation, the DCA agreement, or whatever it may be about – and where there is a fundamental consensus that there must be a balance between different interests in a well-functioning democracy.

I therefore think that a good balance point regarding this solution was not to have a two-thirds majority in relation to the first decision, because in such a case it would make it impossible for a non-qualified majority to raise a constitutional issue and put it under democratic debate in an election. I personally think this would have become unbalanced.

This, however, is well-balanced. It is not an expression of a conspiracy aimed at the EU or Nato, but rather it is about how we, in general, are to build a democratic state governed by the rule of law that is balanced between different interests. I think this captures that in a very good way.

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Elsa Widding (-)

Madam Speaker! Thank you for the answer, Minister of Justice!

I am coming back to Nato. It is difficult when we have such completely different views on how things have gone for Sweden and what the EU has inflicted upon us. It is not unthinkable, given what has happened, that the Swedish people will soon begin to realize that the USA is very destructive and quite dangerous for us and that a majority in the Riksdag would therefore be in favor of a withdrawal. At the same time, perhaps a minority in the Riksdag wants Sweden to remain a member of the EU, and perhaps that even benefits them themselves. With the change that is now being proposed, a minority could naturally decide against the majority. I do not understand how we can even say that we have any democracy in the Riksdag when a minority can decide over a majority.

Another current issue is the question of vaccination at the urging of, for example, WHO, EU, or some other entity with its own special interests. We know that WHO today is largely funded by groups within the pharmaceutical industry. WHO's funders have an interest in WHO declaring a pandemic, a public health emergency of international concern, which the Secretary-General can declare entirely on his own initiative. All member countries are ordered to follow the directives that WHO advocates. It does not matter what we – the people – think. We all remember WHO's gigantic blunder during the recent so-called pandemic.

Sweden has not protested during the development of the update of the health regulations or the new pandemic law. Here, Jakob Forssmed and the government have, naturally, done a terribly bad job. Now it is there. Next time it will guaranteed be worse with restrictions of human rights even here, not least since the government has received more power during war, crisis, and pandemic.

Everything is, therefore, heading in the same bad direction. Not much of democracy and that dizzying sense of freedom that the government so nicely describes on its website will be left.

The aftermath of the covid pandemic, which we do not talk about at all in Sweden, is now that millions of people died from side effects from the vaccine, and even more were injured. Myocarditis has become a common disease among young people, and both children and adults are affected by strange ill health in the form of blood clots, nerve damage, and accelerating cancer.

The debate about this is intense, but not at all in Sweden, as said. The former head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, is suspected of extensive and horrific crimes and has recently undergone long interrogations in the American Congress.

If we in Sweden suspect that directives from WHO during a new future pandemic would become just as catastrophic again, that is, create as much disease and death as during covid and therefore want to stop WHO, the question is whether it will be just as simple after the Riksdag makes these changes.

Ursula von der Leyen is being investigated for improper decisions and is under scrutiny for the purchase of the vaccine for EU citizens, where billions of euros of tax money changed hands without democratic oversight. There is, of course, a name for this as well, and it shows how little we as a nation can today trust the non-elected individuals who are arbitrarily appointed as leaders of a supranational organization such as the EU.

The Council of State and the government now want to push through a constitutional amendment which means that a minority shall be able to block future constitutional amendments. How can that strengthen democracy for the Swedish people? It seems rather as if one wants to facilitate for a minority, controlled by foreign interests, to gain greater power over the Swedish people through political minorities of climbers, as I call them, who sell their loyalty to the EU, WHO, Nato and other supranational organizations instead of looking out for the best interests of their own country.

(ANDRE VICE TALMANNEN: I want to remind that this debate is about changes to the constitution, so that we do not stray too far from the subject.)

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Madam Speaker! I must say that we have moved quite a bit away from the core issue; I experience that perhaps nine-tenths of the contribution concerned a long series of questions that do not touch upon the core issue for the day. But that is the way it is with that matter.

I have set out my view regarding that. The Government stands behind it. Eight parties in the Riksdag stood behind it in the committee, and I believe that seven of the eight parties will stand behind this in the Riksdag.

Simply put, Elsa Widding seems to have a very narrow, almost somewhat confused, view of what a democratic rule of law is and what characterizes it. She seems to return to the idea that the basic agreement in a well-functioning democracy should be that a majority in the form of 51 percent should be able to do pretty much whatever it wants – reasonably also in relation to an individual protection of freedom and rights.

We have to say that there is quite a lot of historical experience showing that a democracy presupposes another order with a balance between different interests, and I think this constitutional product is a very pleasing expression of that.

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Elsa Widding (-)

Madam Speaker! I am very concerned that the Minister does not understand the connection to what has happened and what the consequence of these new decisions could be. It does not take that much to understand it.

Let us preserve democracy in Sweden and, instead of distorting and eroding it, strengthen the democratic system and say no to supranational proposals, regardless of who the sender is! In order to preserve Sweden as a nation with the freedoms that the government so generously describes on its website, we need to stand up strongly against agendas that threaten our freedom and sovereignty both today and tomorrow.

There is also a connection here to the constitution. All public power in Sweden originates from the people. Is it to remain so, or what does State Councilor Strömmer actually believe? The purpose of the non-profit foundation that Gunnar Strömmer created in 2002 was to strengthen the fundamental freedoms and rights of Swedish individuals. It concerns, for example, things such as providing protection for people in dispute with the state, avoiding the Swedish power apparatus abusing laws and regulations against the public, achieving an impact for strengthened freedoms and rights and increased legal certainty.

This was a very, very good initiative. To stop political abuses against the public is important, and it receives far too little attention today through media that are tasked with scrutinizing power. These are the ideals that I myself stand for, and here I can see that Minister Strömmer has shared the same passion for freedom and rights.

Therefore, I want to ask the Minister again: What happened? Where did the passion for democracy and justice go? The constitutional amendment that the Minister contributes to in the capacity of Minister for Justice in the sitting government actually runs counter to the purpose of the foundation Centrum för rättvisa.

Madam Speaker! How is it even possible for a talented and well-read lawyer to lend themselves to pushing through a constitutional amendment that enables a coup, in direct opposition to democratic principles?

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Madam Speaker! I nevertheless choose to interpret the last part as a compliment regarding my talent and skill; I may not be able to reciprocate it in the same way.

It is only a matter of reading what Centrum för rättvisa writes in its referral responses. They are, therefore, behind these changes to the constitution.

Why then? Yes, because the basic agreement for the operation, which I very much was involved in starting, was about developing Swedish democracy from a situation where the principle of popular sovereignty, which is fundamentally a socialist idea of democracy, was alone prevailing in our country. Every restriction of the immediate popular will – 51 percent – was then regarded as a threat to democracy.

It is, therefore, a socialist view of democracy that we are being presented with from the rostrum of the Riksdag today, a view of democracy that we have spent decades trying to move away from. What is the individual protection of freedoms and rights an expression of? It is a limitation of the popular will, that is to say that 51 percent should not be able to take away my freedom of speech, freedom of religion, property rights, or freedom of association. That is why we have a constitutional protection for freedoms and rights.

If we go back 50 years in time, that legal protection did not exist in an effective way in our own constitution. We had to go the long way around via the European Convention on Human Rights. That is what this entire legal development has been about – to find a position where a majority – admittedly a very limited majority of 51 percent – cannot do whatever it wants with individual individuals or, for that matter, with the democratic rule of law in Sweden.

If this is to be a discussion about democracy and the rule of law and not about WHO, EU, Nato and whatever it was, one must probably go back to a deeper understanding of where Swedish democracy comes from. Why has it been important to put a muzzle on the unbridled will of the people? Well, ultimately it is about protecting individual individuals against state overreach. It is a fundamental chord in my commitment to these issues. It is also a fundamental chord in this reform.

The interpellations debate was hereby concluded.

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