INSIDE SWEDEN: Spring getaways, abolishing PR, and barrels of human waste
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I'm writing this on the way to Hannover on the second leg of my annual rail odyssey to my family in the UK.
But rather than moan about the trains being late (again, which they are), I thought I'd cover the viral - or perhaps more accurately, bacterial - story about the Danish chef couple who abandoned their so-called luxury eco-retreat, leaving behind 158 barrels of poo.
After they claimed this was in fact "very normal" in Sweden in an interview with the UK's Guardian newspaper, a member of The Local's staff revealed, somewhat grudgingly, that they, too, store poo at their summer house, with eight barrels in an outbuilding.
We felt this was something we needed to get to the bottom of so I contacted Charlotte Löfgren, senior adviser for sewage collection at Swedish Regions, the umbrella organisation for Sweden's municipalities.
She confirmed that it is, indeed, "not uncommon" in areas that aren't connected to municipal sewage systems. It is even possible to compost it yourself, as the couple claimed they were doing.
"You can do it, but you don't keep it in barrels like that, and you don't have 158 of them," Löfgren said. "Composting is for a summer house that you go to for four weeks a year. It's not for this kind of resort. It's too much. What are you supposed to do with it?"
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Our puzzles move from strength to strength. This week our crossword touches on the latest news and general knowledge about Sweden. Our word search has a special fika theme! Play here!
When the government announced their Tidö Agreement with the far-right Sweden Democrats back in October 2022, one of the clauses that caused readers the most worry was the proposal to abolish permanent residency, especially after the then boss of Migration Agency said he'd "be worried" about that if he was an immigrant.
Last week, the interim conclusions to this inquiry were delivered, with asylum seekers and some others stripped of the right to receive permanent residency. We broke down the details of who will be affected.
The possibility of removing permanent residency permits already awarded will be discussed in the final report in October, and it's hard to see how this wouldn't be in some way retroactive.
We asked Sweden's migration minister Johan Forssell last week to respond to foreigners losing faith in Sweden because he wants the proposed stricter citizenship laws to apply retroactively to applications which have already been submitted.
He retorted that this didn't qualify as retroactive. We wanted to check if he was right, so we spoke to three professors of constitutional or administrative law, one of whom said he was, and two of whom said he wasn't.
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What else have we been writing about this week?
The entire board of the failing battery company Northvolt resigned in the middle of the bankruptcy proceedings, which doesn't bode well for the future of the company.
A government inquiry proposed surprisingly far-reaching reforms to Sweden's much-criticised free school system, although critics complained the changes would leave the worst aspects intact. We explained some of the most important proposals, and I looked at how it might affect the 2026 election.
The head of Sweden's care worker union complained in an opinion piece that the proposed abolition of the 'track changes' system would have serious consequences for Swedish healthcare by forcing many essential workers to leave the country.
It's Easter next weekend, so to help you plan we updated our list of what's open and what's closed in Sweden on different days of the holiday.
If you're planning to use the week to see some new parts of Sweden, our readers had some excellent suggestions for spring getaways.
Now I'll get back to my own spring getaway. It looks like I might make that crucial Hannover connection. See you after Easter!
Did I mention that our word search this week has a special fika theme? Play here!
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