Gunilla Edelstam, an associate professor of law, warns that the Swedish Parliament is trying to make it more difficult to change the Constitution and if it is voted through, it could be almost impossible for Sweden to leave the EU.

Text: Gunilla Edelstam | Photo: Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 4.0

Form of Government (RF) is the constitution that sets out the foundations of the Swedish system of government. Among other things, the RF sets out the basis for how the Riksdag governs Sweden through legislation. According to the current RF, which came into being in 1974, two parliamentary decisions are required to amend a constitution with an intervening election to the Riksdag. Half of the members of the Riksdag must then vote in favour of an amendment to the two Riksdag decisions.

Now the Swedish Parliament wants to make it harder to change the RF (Government Bill 2024/25:165). In the second decision after the parliamentary election, a qualified majority of two-thirds of the members of the Riksdag must vote in favour. Otherwise, the decision will fall and the proposed amendment to the Instrument of Government will not apply.

Parliament took the first decision on this change in October 2025. Parliamentary elections will be held in September 2026, after which Parliament will decide once more on this amendment. If the decision on the amendment is supported by at least half of the members of both parliaments, the Constitution will be amended.

Thereafter, any future amendments to the RF will require 2/3 of the members of parliament to vote in favour of a proposed amendment in the second round after a general election. This means that it will be very difficult to change the form of government in the future.’

Why do you want to make such a change?

The aim is said to be to strengthen democracy. Is this true?

Having a system where a majority (at least half) of the members of parliament must vote in favour of an amendment is perfectly reasonable, but making constitutional amendments more difficult by requiring a 2/3 majority for amendment is hardly democratic in a country like Sweden.

This means that a minority of 1/3 of the members of the Riksdag can prevent important changes to the RF. This does not strengthen democracy in Sweden. For example, EU membership is based on the fact that Sweden is a member of the European Union according to RF 1:10. This is thus laid down in the Constitution.

If Sweden were to want to leave the EU in the future, it would be sufficient for 1/3 of the members of the Riksdag to vote against. It will probably be impossible to leave the EU in the future if the proposal for a 2/3 majority wins through.

Membership of the EU means that legislation on issues such as the environment, electricity, forestry, competition, trade, agriculture and labour law can be decided by the EU. Decisions on such issues are taken by the European Parliament. Sweden's 21 MEPs out of a total of 720 cannot stand up to a majority of MEPs from other EU countries. EU legislation on electricity has instead led to an increase in Swedish electricity prices.

This is because Germany has the right to buy electricity from Sweden under an EU law. Germany buys a lot of electricity from Sweden. EU legislation has also had a negative impact on Sweden's forestry industry. Sweden has the most forest of all EU countries. About 63% of Sweden is covered by forest.

Forest industry representatives find the EU's requirements too tough, unrealistic and ineffective. This could hit Swedish jobs and export revenues hard. We could regain our sovereignty and self-government by amending RF 1:10 and leaving the EU, but with 1/3 of MPs voting against, it is unlikely that an exit will be possible in the future.

With regard to EU membership in particular, we could have chosen a different route to enable withdrawal if Sweden had had a constitutional court. If such a court existed, we could ask it to declare our membership of the EU invalid. The basis for this is the starting point in Chapter 1, Section 1 of the Swedish Constitution, which states that ”all power emanates from the people”.

This means that the Swedish people vote for their politicians in the Riksdag. These elected politicians then have the right to legislate in Sweden. We could demand that EU membership be cancelled on the grounds that the Riksdag never had the right to transfer legislative power to the EU. Legislative power only exists when the power emanates from the Swedish people.

The Riksdag consists of the elected representatives, i.e. the politicians elected by the Swedish people. The Riksdag's task is to legislate, but when the link to the Swedish people disappears, i.e. when legislative power is transferred from the Riksdag to the EU Parliament, this is a violation of RF 1:1.

The Swedish people have not voted for all the politicians in the EU, so the power exercised in the EU does not come from the Swedish people. We have only elected the 21 Swedish MEPs but not the other 699 MEPs in the EU.

The EU therefore does not have the right to legislate in a way that applies to the Swedish people. The link to the Swedish people does not exist for the EU Parliament. There is no legal right for the Swedish Parliament to transfer legislative power to the EU. This is the meaning of RF 1:1. We could therefore have EU membership declared invalid by a Swedish constitutional court. The problem is that we have no constitutional court in Sweden.

Limitation of state power is a characteristic of a modern democratic state. Limitations should be set out in a constitution such as the RF when it comes to the parliament's governance of the country, but if the parliament in future decisions (after the next parliamentary elections) accepts that 1/3 of the members of parliament in the future should be able to stop any attempt to change the constitution (for example by voting against any proposal to introduce a constitutional court), this may mean that it is not possible to limit important parts of state power.

There is a case for retaining the current more democratic possibility of amending the Constitution by a simple majority, where the votes of half of the members of parliament are required to accept a constitutional amendment.

Gunilla Edelstam Associate Professor, PhD, Team member of Swedish sovereignty and the EU, Law and order