Internal government emails obtained by The Local show the European Commission pressuring Sweden over treatment of vulnerable British citizens, following media reports of deportation orders given to a 78-year-old woman and a man with Alzheimer’s.
Following the reporting of the cases of George ‘Horace’ Mason, who faces deportation despite requiring 24-hour care for Alzheimer’s, and the retired 78-year-old nurse Joyce Thomas, the Commission issued an urgent, 24-hour demand for answers on what the Swedish authorities had done to help such vulnerable individuals, according to internal emails obtained by The Local through a freedom of information request.
A department secretary at the Swedish Ministry of Justice, sent an urgent email to an international relations expert at the Swedish Migration Agency, on August 19th, requesting details of the agency’s efforts to help ‘vulnerable’ Britons retain their residency rights.
The department secretary gave the Migration Agency a deadline of just over 24 hours, explaining that the Commission needed the information so that it could respond to a request from the UK authorities.
The Commission, he said, “was demanding information in connection with the media attention around cases of British citizens in Sweden”, and wanted “an account of how the Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) has worked to support vulnerable people in meeting their obligations under the Withdrawal Agreement and avoiding errors in their applications, in accordance with Article 18(1).” 
The Migration Agency official then responded on August 20th, 18 minutes after the deadline, providing a generalised account of the agency’s communications efforts but failing to mention any specific efforts to help vulnerable British citizens who, like Mason, could not be expected to submit their own application for post-Brexit residency.
She defended the agency for its failure to contact British citizens directly to inform them of the requirement to apply for post-Brexit residency before December 31st 2021, passing the blame to the government (which at that time was led by the Social Democrats).
“Regarding the question of direct mailings to British citizens residing in Sweden,” she wrote, “instructions for cooperation and information transfer between agencies, as well as instructions for and financing of extensive information efforts are given by the government. No such mandate was ever given, either to the Migration Agency or the Tax Agency”.
The Commission’s enquiry on outreach to vulnerable British citizens came just days after another email exchange on August 17th, which showed the Justice Department desperately trying to get usable statistics from the Migration Agency on how many applications for post-Brexit residence had been submitted after the deadline, and how many of those late applications had been rejected.
In that exchange, the official admitted to the Ministry of Justice that the Migration Agency still did not have separate statistical data on late applications.
“We… confirm that the following wording still applies,” she wrote, before pasting text submitted to the European Commission for inclusion in its 2025 report on member states’ application of the Withdrawal Agreement.
“‘The Migration Agency cannot provide statistical data distinguishing between those who applied late and those who applied in time, for example to upgrade from pre-permanent to permanent residence documents. All applications made in the reporting year, late or not, are covered in Section B of the table.'”
“Regarding whether we can generate statistics on applications received late in the future, this is something that is being investigated within the Migration Agency,” she continued.
Instead of providing this data, she instead referred to the two quality checks the Migration Agency carried out on Brexit decisions in 2024 and 2025.
She said that the agency had identified 79 cases where an applicant had been granted residence status despite missing the deadline “following an assessment that the applicant has provided reasonable grounds for why the application was submitted late”.
In a separate exchange earlier that month on August 11th, another official at the Ministry of Justice wrote to the Migration Agency to follow up on the UK delegation’s visit to Sweden earlier in the spring, asking for a copy of the written feedback that the agency had promised to provide to the British delegates on certain matters.
The internal admission that the Migration Agency lacks reliable data is significant because both the agency and Sweden’s Justice Minister have repeatedly claimed that Sweden has been willing to accept reasonable grounds for late applications, even though the Brits in Sweden group has yet to find a single case where this has happened.
The Migration Agency on Friday told Radio Sweden, the English unit of Sweden’s public broadcaster, that 458 Britons had been deported from or ordered to leave Sweden since Brexit.