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BREXIT

Swedish EU ambassador: ‘I believe it is possible to avoid a no-deal Brexit’

A senior Swedish EU diplomat has called for common sense in Brexit talks, as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepares for a political showdown in parliament.

Published: 3 September 2019 15:51 CEST
Updated: 3 September 2019 16:52 CEST
Swedish EU ambassador: 'I believe it is possible to avoid a no-deal Brexit'
Campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament in London on Tuesday. Photo: AP Photo/Matt Dunham

Sweden's EU ambassador Lars Danielsson warned time was running out for Britain, with less than two months to go to the deadline for the country to leave the EU, but told The Local he was holding out hope.

“I'm paid to be an optimist,” he said. “I believe that it is possible to avoid a Brexit without a deal, but of course the risk has increased.”

“But you would still think that there ought to be some kind of common sense that lets all parties involved sit down and talk. Because they haven't, for a very long time.”

The Local met Danielsson in Stockholm just a day after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans to prorogue parliament – a highly controversial move seen by its critics as a way of pushing through a no-deal Brexit through without members of parliament blocking the UK's exit.


Lars Danielsson. Photo: Kristian Pohl/Regeringskansliet

Danielsson, 66, a seasoned diplomat and civil servant from Halmstad in southern Sweden, has previously served as Sweden's consul general to Hong Kong and Macau, and ambassador to South Korea and Germany, before taking up the position as permanent representative of Sweden to the EU in 2016.

Asked whether he was surprised by the Conservative prime minister's move to suspend parliament, he first stressed “it is not for me to review”, then added, smiling: “But I have seen Boris Johnson as a foreign minister in the EU's foreign affairs council, so I have stopped being surprised.”

“He is a very colourful politician.”

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said this week he was “not optimistic” about the UK's chances of avoiding a no-deal, reiterating that the union would not be willing to renegotiate the so-called Irish backstop – a mechanism intended to prevent a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Political leaders fear that the return to a hard border could threaten the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland after years of armed conflict.


Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged lawmakers to back him. Photo: Kirsty O'Connor/PA via AP

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson faced a potential rebellion in parliament, where MPs were set to debate an emergency motion later on Tuesday to allow the opposition and rebel Tories to help prevent a no-deal.

“There is a certain surprise that the process in the United Kingdom has been such that the British government when negotiating did not ensure that they were able to get that which was negotiated through parliament,” said Danielsson when asked if he and his colleagues were surprised by the political turmoil in recent years.

“We have learned to appreciate and respect the British public system, and I think many are a little bit disappointed and are wondering what happened. But there is also a lot of tolerance (among EU leaders and civil servants) for the fact that domestic politics sometimes play a big part, that's life.”

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Sweden has said it is working together with the EU commission and with other EU member states to minimise the economic impact of Britain leaving without a deal. Last week Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson and EU Minister Hans Dahlgren insisted the Nordic country was “well-prepared” to face a no-deal Brexit.

But the situation for Brits in Sweden after an initial one-year grace period immediately following Brexit remains unclear, with campaign groups calling on the Swedish government to clarify the rules.

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BREXIT

British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

Former Bollywood actor Kenny Solomons' imminent return to the UK after failing to get post-Brexit residency has made national news in Sweden thanks to his marriage to the singer from the band Alcazar. He tells The Local why he's leaving.

Published: 19 June 2024 15:29 CEST
British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

The QX gala – Sweden’s glitzy, televised celebration of gay culture – is not the first place a man in his 20s would go to find a future wife. 

But that’s what happened to British actor Kenny Solomons.

Solomons, now 37, was already a well-known face in Sweden after playing the superhero in adverts for the internet provider Bredbandsbolaget. He was there to give out an award. Tess Merkel, singer for the nu-disco band Alcazar – one of Sweden’s most successful ever groups – was there to receive one.

“It was utterly insane,” Solomons remembers. “I had had a few drinks and then I woke up the next day in this typical Swedish apartment with kids’ toys everywhere. I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on?'”

“The kids were away with their dad, and Tess went off to work the next day and she left a note – as a joke – on the kitchen table that said ‘sorry I left you, but I took off to plan our wedding’. I thought it was a one-night stand. I was 25 years old and she was 17 years older. I didn’t expect to be married.”

The actor Kenny Solomons (right) arrives at the QX Gala in 2016. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

But in 2015 they got engaged and then in 2017, they married in the Indian holiday paradise of Goa, making it legal for Sweden with a ceremony in Stockholm City Hall the next year. 

By then, Solomons was so deeply embedded in Stockholm’s celebrity whirl that everything from the Brexit referendum to the deadline for post-Brexit residency had more or less passed him by. It was only when he took a trip to Greece in the summer of 2022, his first international trip since the pandemic broke out, that he realised the mistake he had made. 

“We flew back through Serbia, which is outside the European Union, so as we were coming in through the Swedish border, they said ‘hey, you do realise that you’re going to need to send in a whole load of information’, and I was completely shocked. I had no idea. I mean, to some people, I might sound like an absolute moron, but I just wasn’t aware of it.” 

In some ways his ignorance was unsurprising, given the Swedish authorities’ decision not to contact British citizens directly, even digitally, to inform them of the need to apply for post-Brexit residency by the end of 2021, although there was information published online.

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Unlike many Brits in Sweden, Solomons was at that point completely integrated, living in the upmarket Stockholm district of Hammarby Sjöstad, and speaking almost exclusively Swedish.   

“It wasn’t originally the plan to do everything in Swedish. It was after I started working and running a business here, that it just sort of kicked in,” he remembers. “After three or four years, I suddenly was like, ‘ah, OK, I’m speaking Swedish. My mother would be very proud, that me, a dyslexic boy from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, could speak even one word in another language!”

Because he only hung out with Swedes and rarely met other Brits, he had simply not heard about the Brexit deadline. 

“All of my friends are in the industry. I socialise among those who also work as artists here in Sweden,” he explains. “When you work as an entrepreneur or an artist, there is nobody to give you that little nudge and say, ‘hey, there is a thing going on called Brexit and it’s going to affect your status here in Sweden’. I had absolutely no idea that it would affect me in this way, and would still be affecting me four years on.”

Looking back, he remembers spending much of 2020 and 2021 desperately trying and eventually failing to save his chain of barbershops and hair-replacement therapy centres from bankruptcy due to the pandemic.

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When he did apply for post-Brexit residency – nearly a year late – he was rejected as the Migration Agency does not treat ignorance as “reasonable grounds” for missing the deadline. He appealed the decision to the Migration Court, but this month decided he had had enough of waiting, given that rejection was “inevitable”. 

“It’s now 19 months since I sent in my appeal to the Migration Court, and the pressure of not knowing, every day, and the pressure of having to say ‘no’ to career opportunities outside of Europe, and the pressure of not knowing with 100 percent certainty that I can live and work in Sweden in the long run was just affecting my health, and my mental health as well,” he says.

“I hit the wall, was suffering with anxiety, and was incredibly unhappy. So I made the decision.” 

He’s now going to return to the UK and apply for spousal reunion with Merkel. As he has no young children of his own, there is little chance of getting granted the right to do this from within Sweden.

Since he left the UK as a young man, his mother has died, and his 60-year-old father has left their childhood home in Essex and moved to Chester on the other side of England, somewhere he has never been. 

“I guess I’ll go and sleep on his couch,” he says. “I can moan and be upset and say all these awful things. But I have my health and I have a place to go. There are people in a similar situation that don’t have any connections or ties left in the UK any longer, so I’m very grateful to at least have a couch to crash on while I figure out this next step.” 

His father got married in the middle of June, and Solomon’s plan is to return for the wedding party on August 24th, handing in his application for spousal reunion in Sweden within days of arrival. He has no idea if he will then have to wait six months, or two years, before he is granted the right to live again in Sweden.  

“My wife and I, we really always try to make the best out of a bad situation, whatever it is, so when I leave Sweden and start my process from my dad’s I want to continue to be able to give back to this country.” 

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His next plan is to return to India, where he spent several years before coming to Sweden working as an actor in Bollywood films. 

“You’re gonna think I’m completely nuts. I want to fly to the most northern part of India and run from North India to South India, the whole way, and raise money for Läkare Utan Gränser [the Swedish arm of the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)].” 

He says that one of the silver linings to his situation is that as someone involved in Swedish showbusiness, his case has received media coverage, unlike hundreds of other British citizens who have been victims of Sweden’s strict application of the EU Withdrawal Agreement. 

“It’s a very, very great luxury and something I don’t take for granted that I have a platform that can be used for to spread my thoughts and my opinions,” he said, adding that he has also enjoyed sharing information with and trying to help other British people in the same situation. 

Tess Merkel’s band Alcazar performed at the Eurovision Grand Final in Malmö in 2024. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Now he’s looking forward to returning back to the UK, where family and friends were in May blown away by the surprise appearance of Merkel and the rest of Alcazar at the Eurovision Grand Final. 

“I had to keep it a secret from my family in England. I couldn’t tell anybody because Alcazar had written a contract with Eurovision,” he remembers. “So my family didn’t know, and they were just shocked when they came on. They Facetimed me just afterwards and said, ‘they really made fun of Alcazar. I felt really sorry for them’.”

But Alcazar, he said, had no issues with being made the butt of a joke about their ‘reunion’ not quite being the hoped-for Abba appearance. The are, he says, “a playful band”. 

“She is that person in real life. She’s absolutely fantastic. She’s an absolute gem. She’s my best friend,” he said of Merkel. “She might say to you, ‘it will be quite nice to have a bit of a break from Kenny. He’s a pain in the ass’. But taking this step is like losing my right hand, because we are so co-dependent on each other – in all the best ways.” 

Membership+ subscribers can listen to the full interview with Kenny Solomons in the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast, which will be available from Wednesday, June 26th.   

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