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Of: TT
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Photo: Henrik Montgomery / TT
Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist.
The government should be able to request military support from Finland in the event of an armed attack without asking the Riksdag. And Finland must be able to receive swift Swedish military aid to prevent violations of Finnish territory.
– It is about the opportunities to be able to give and receive support more quickly between Sweden and Finland. Swedish military forces must be able to deploy in case of violations of Finnish territory and we must be able to receive Finnish support in a similar situation to face an armed attack against Sweden, said Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist (S) before the parliamentary debate on the law of operational military support between Sweden and Sweden. Finland.
As one of the first decisions of the new parliamentary year, the Riksdag said yes to the law.
Signal to the outside world
– This will be a signal of security policy for the outside world, he added in the debate.
So far, Riksdag approval has been required to give or receive support from Finland, which can take about a week. The government wants to avoid that delay.
– We can make a government decision directly, we do not need to present a bill to the Riksdag, says Hultqvist.
Not in an armed attack
But the new law does not give the government the right to skip the Riksdag if it wants to support Finland in an armed attack, only if it is to assist in violations of Finnish territory. If there is already an armed conflict in Finland, the consequence may be that Sweden is considered to have entered the war. For that, the approval of the Riksdag will also be required in the future.
The moderate Pål Jonson, chairman of the Riksdag’s defense committee, welcomes the law.
– It is a natural development of the Swedish security policy line where we distance ourselves from freedom of alliance and neutrality as defining elements and instead seek cooperation, he says.
But Jonsson’s party and the other three bourgeois parties wanted the law to allow the same cooperation with other EU countries and NATO.
The Defense Minister objected, in the Riksdag debate, that there is no obstacle for Sweden to give and receive military support from countries other than Finland. But then the Riksdag must first give the go-ahead.
– Finland is the country with which we have the opportunity to do so and we have the same position when it comes to freedom of military alliance, says the defense minister, referring to the fact that neither Sweden nor Finland are members of the alliance defense of NATO, unlike the Nordic neighbors Norway and Denmark. .
The law will take effect on October 15, according to a decision by the Riksdag.
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