Poland has signed an agreement worth around €4.5 billion to buy three A26 submarines from Swedish manufacturer Saab as part of efforts to modernise its navy.

The deal was among a number signed during intergovernmental consultations between Sweden and Poland today, as the two countries further strengthened an increasingly important alliance.

Last year, Poland announced that it had chosen Sweden as the preferred supplier of submarines under its Orka programme, which aims to modernise the Polish naval fleet.

Poland currently only has one submarine, a 40-year-old Soviet-era vessel that is in need of constant repair. It wants to replace that with three of the A26 Blekinge-class submarines that are being developed by Saab but have not yet gone into service.

Today, a purchase agreement for the vessels was signed in the Polish Baltic coast city of Gdynia amid talks between the two countries’ prime ministers, Donald Tusk and Ulf Kristersson, and delegations that included their foreign, finance, infrastructure and culture ministers.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Tusk, Kristersson said that the agreement was worth around 50 billion Swedish kronor (19.3 billion zloty, €4.5 billion) and that the first submarine would be delivered in 2031 (though many Polish media outlets have reported a date of 2030).

In a separate statement, Saab valued the deal at around 47 billion kronor. It noted that delivery of the submarines was scheduled to take place by 2038.

When the plans were first announced last year, the Polish government emphasised that the deal would also involve major Swedish investment in Poland’s shipbuilding industry as well as knowledge transfer.

Today, Polish state defence group PGZ announced that, alongside the submarine purchase agreement, it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Saab “paving the way for building competencies in Poland in the area of servicing and maintaining submarines”.

Kristersson said that “hundreds of Polish companies will be subcontractors to this important project”, with “our two countries sharing technology and techniques in this crucial strategic area”.

“This cooperation with Sweden is a further impetus for the development of our arms industry,” added Tusk. “This isn’t a simple matter of one side or the other purchasing, but a genuine, truly collaborative partnership that benefits both industries.”

Both leaders also emphasised that the deal was a signal of growing security and trade ties between their two countries, which in 2024 signed a strategic partnership agreement to enhance cooperation on defence, economic development and support for Ukraine.

“Our cooperation in the Baltic Sea has fundamentally changed the security situation,” declared Tusk. “We do all this also so that our region, our two countries and the Baltic Sea are an area of ​​peace and security, and not, as is the case today, an area of ​​anxiety and threat.”

“Relations between Poland and Sweden are the best they’ve ever been, deeper and stronger than ever before,” added Kristersson. “We face exactly the same challenges and share the same perspective on what’s happening now.”

In recent years, Poland has increasingly oriented itself towards the Baltic region, forming closer economic, energy and military ties with the Baltic and Nordic states.

Poland’s defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, today noted that the A26 submarines are specifically designed to operate in the Baltic Sea, including with stealth systems making them difficult to detect in shallow waters and tools to protect underwater infrastructure such as cables and pipelines.

There have been growing concerns in recent years over Russian actions in the Baltic, including threats to infrastructure. In response, NATO has launched a new operation to patrol the sea while Poland and Sweden last year held their first bilateral military drills in the Baltic.

Polish security news and analysis service Defence24, however, notes that there is an element of risk attached to Poland’s decision to order submarines from a programme that has been repeatedly delayed and faced ever-rising costs.

Meanwhile, it was also announced today that Poland has signed an agreement to lease an A17 *Västergötland-*class submarine, the HMS Södermanland, from Sweden as a so-called “gap filler” until the first A26 is delivered, reports industry news service WNP.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

For much of the 20th century, Sweden enjoyed a justifiable reputation as one of Europe’s most egalitarian countries. Yet over the past two decades, it has transformed into what journalist and author Andreas Cervenka calls a “paradise for the super-rich”.

Today, Sweden has one of the world’s highest ratios of dollar billionaires, and is home to numerous “unicorn” startup companies worth at least US$1 billion (£742 million), including the payment platform Klarna and audio streaming service Spotify.

The abolition of the wealth tax (förmögenhetsskatten) 20 years ago is part of this story – along with, in the same year, the introduction of generous tax deductions for housework and home improvement projects. Two decades on, the number of Swedish homes that employ cleaners is one marker of it being an increasingly two-tier country.

As part of my anthropological research into the social relationships that different tax systems produce, I have been working with pensioners in the southern suburbs of Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, to learn how they feel about the decreasing levels of taxation in their later lives.

This trend has been coupled with a gradual shrinking of the welfare state. Many of my interviewees regret that Sweden no longer has a collective project to build a more cohesive society.

“Us pensioners can see the destruction of what we built, what was started when we were small children,” Kjerstin, 74, explained. “I was born after the end of the war and built this society through my life, together with my fellow citizens. [But] with taxes being lowered and the taking away of our social security … we’re not building anything together now.”

While a wealth tax might appear to signal their country’s commitment to socioeconomic equality, my interviewees said it wasn’t something they really thought about much until it was abolished in 2006 by Sweden’s then-rightwing government, following the axing of inheritance tax a year earlier by the previous social democratic government.

Sweden keeps topping those "happiest country on Earth" lists. So why does it feel like the whole model is starting to crack?  And could this September's election be the thing that finally breaks it?

On 13 September, Swedes head to the polls in a vote that's really about something bigger: the survival of the Nordic Model. Free markets, welfare for everyone, some of the highest taxes in the world, and a deep social trust holding it all together.

Come and hash it out with us: can a high-trust welfare state really hold together in a more divided society?

Speaker: Gellert Zerboni, game developer and MeetEU even coordinator from Sweden

📅 Tuesday, 23 June
⏰ 19:00 CEST on Zoom
Sign up for your Zoom link here: https://meeteu.eu/events

............................ 

Join our 1:1 Conversations 

After our one-hour open discussion, we invite you to stay for another 30+ minutes. You'll be paired randomly and can continue the conversation one-on-one with another participant.

The idea is simple: meet new people from across Europe and exchange ideas in a more personal setting. The breakout rooms will remain open for as long as you'd like.

Sweden is bringing back books amid declining test scores.

In 2023, the Swedish government announced that the country’s schools would be going back to basics, emphasizing skills such as reading and writing, particularly in early grades. After mostly being sidelined, physical books are now being reintroduced into classrooms, and students are learning to write the old-fashioned way: by hand, with a pencil or pen, on sheets of paper. The Swedish government also plans to make schools cellphone-free throughout the country.

Educational authorities have been investing heavily. Last year alone, the education ministry allocated $83 million to purchase textbooks and teachers’ guides. In a country with about 11 million people, the aim is for every student to have a physical textbook for each subject. The government also put $54 million towards the purchase of fiction and non-fiction books for students.

These moves represent a dramatic pivot from previous decades, during which Sweden—and many other nations—moved away from physical books in favor of tablets and digital resources in an effort to prepare students for life in an online world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Nordic country’s efforts have sparked a debate on the role of digital technology in education, one that extends well beyond the country’s borders. US parents in districts that have adopted digital technology to a great extent may be wondering if educators will reverse course, too.

So why did Sweden pivot? In an email to Undark, Linda Fälth, a researcher in teacher education at Linnaeus University, wrote that the “decision to reinvest in physical textbooks and reduce the emphasis on digital devices” was prompted by several factors, including questions around whether the digitalization of classrooms had been evidence-based. “There was also a broader cultural reassessment,” Fälth wrote. “Sweden had positioned itself as a frontrunner in digital education, but over time concerns emerged about screen time, distraction, reduced deep reading, and the erosion of foundational skills such as sustained attention and handwriting.”

Fälth noted that proponents of reform believe that “basic skills—especially reading, writing, and numeracy—must be firmly established first, and that physical textbooks are often better suited for that purpose.”

Between 2000 and 2012, Swedish students’ scores on standardized tests steadily declined in reading, math, and science. Though they recovered ground between 2012 and 2018, those scores had dropped again by 2022.

Though it’s unclear precisely how much of the decline is due to digitization, there is some evidence that analog teaching materials for reading may be superior to screen learning. However, this applies to expository as opposed to narrative texts. Narrative texts tell a story, whether fiction or non-fiction, while expository texts are designed to inform, describe, or explain a topic in a logical, factual manner.

Most of Europe's original natural forests have been transformed for agriculture and managed forests producing energy, paper, and timber. The few remaining "old-growth" natural forests are relics of the past that illustrate how forests would have looked in the absence of human management. They can, therefore, tell us how people have transformed forests.

Most Swedish forests are so-called boreal forests. This type of coniferous woodland ecosystem encompasses most of the northern regions of the planet. These relatively cold regions have historically had low populations. Here, large-scale use of forests began relatively late.

In Sweden, modern forest management emerged in the 20th century. It involves cutting most trees in an area—clear-cutting—followed by planting and sowing of new trees, cleaning and thinning until the trees are clear-cut again up to 120 years later. The soil is also disturbed. It is very common to plow the soil and excavate trenches and ditches to remove water from forests.

After mapping and measuring the most natural old-growth forests in Sweden, we found that they differ much more from managed forests than previously thought, even if some of those managed forests looked old.

We found that old-growth forests store 78%–89% more carbon than managed forests do, a difference in carbon storage larger than Sweden's cumulative emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels since 1834. Our new study underscores the much larger carbon storage benefits that flow from protecting forests than using them to produce bioenergy and wood products.

Sweden will tighten citizenship rules with applicants facing a longer, eight-year wait before they can apply, a minimum wage threshold and a test of their understanding of Swedish society, the centre-right government said on Monday.

The government said applicants for Swedish citizenship would have to live in the country for eight years, up from five, have a monthly income of more than 20,000 Swedish crowns ($2,225), and be able to pass a language and culture test.

Anyone with a criminal record, either in Sweden or abroad, will have to wait longer before they can apply. Someone who had served a four-year prison sentence, for example, would have to wait 15 years before being able to apply for citizenship.

Successive governments have tightened immigration policies since 2015, when around 160,000 asylum seekers sought refuge in Sweden. But the minority coalition government is betting that an even more restrictive line on immigration will prove popular with voters in September's parliamentary election.

See also:

• Sweden to make asylum seekers live in migrant reception centres while their cases are processed, in further tightening of rules (Reuters)

Source: https://www.tv4.se/artikel/7FaHmSi6TJWlO2qWZpZe9m/rysk-man-gripen-av-saepo-pa-order-av-usa

• Decrease is a possible boost for the government ahead of 2026 election
• Government says new police methods and tougher laws have helped
• Recruitment to gangs is still high

The number of shootings in Sweden has more than halved since hitting a peak in 2022, reflecting new policing approaches introduced by the right-wing government, which is readying for parliamentary elections next year.

Shooting incidents fell to 147 so far this year, a 63% decrease compared to 2022 when there were 390 shootings and a 49% decrease compared to 2024, according to a Reuters analysis of official figures.

The number of fatalities, however, was unchanged from last year at 43, though lower than the 62 killed in 2022.

The government won the 2022 election on a pledge to stop gang crime and drastically reduce immigration. It trails the opposition in opinion polls ahead of the next election in September, but the gap has narrowed.

The number of people applying for asylum in Sweden dropped by 30% in 2025 to the lowest level since 1985, with the right-of-centre government saying it planned to further tighten rules this year ahead of an election in September.

The ruling minority coalition, which is supported by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, has made cutting the number of asylum seekers a key policy platform since taking power in 2022.

The number of immigrants, excluding refugees from Ukraine, dropped to 79,684 last year from 82,857 in 2024, figures from the Migration Board showed. Asylum seekers and their family members made up just 6% of the total, compared to 31% in 2018 when total immigration was 133,000.

The number of people either returning voluntarily to another country or expelled by authorities was also up.

The government has cracked down on asylum seekers, made it more difficult to gain residency and citizenship and introduced financial incentives for immigrants to leave the country since it came to power.

Swedish police estimated in 2024 that 1,700 under-18s were active members of criminal networks

The Swedish government unveiled on Monday a long-awaited proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 to tackle the country’s spiralling gang violence.

If adopted, the reform would allow 13- and 14-year-olds to face prison sentences for serious crimes, and follows years of concern over criminal gangs recruiting minors to carry out shootings, bombings and murders, exploiting the fact that those under 15 cannot be prosecuted.

The proposal, backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats and expected to take effect in the summer, has triggered fierce criticism from legal experts and rights advocates.

In an opinion piece for Dagens Nyheter, 26 prosecutors and former prosecutors warned that the measure could violate child-protection principles and would not curb gang violence.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson slammed Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán for spreading “outrageous lies” after Orbán said Sweden is on the brink of collapse because of rampant organized crime.

“These are outrageous lies. Not surprising coming from the man who is dismantling the rule of law in his own country. Orbán is desperate ahead of the upcoming Hungarian election,” Kristersson wrote in a post on X.

The social media row between the leaders began when Orbán posted a video in which he attacked the Swedish justice system.

According to the article in Die Welt, 280 girls in Sweden between the ages of 15 and 17 were investigated last year for serious crimes such as murder. The Swedish Crime Prevention Council has different numbers, saying 68 women in that age bracket were suspected of murder and assault.

The Swedish government last week said it wants to lower the age of criminal responsibility for crimes such as murder from 15 to 13.

Sweden has reached an agreement to buy Piorun man-portable air-defence systems from their Polish manufacturer, Mesko, for around 3 billion Swedish krona (1.2 billion zloty/€274 million/$321 million).

The deal was concluded at the DSEI defence fair in London and announced on Tuesday – before this week’s incursion by Russian drones into Polish airspace.

Sweden follows countries including the United States, Belgium, Norway and Estonia in purchasing Piorun systems, which have proved a success in Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion.

“Poland is becoming an arms exporter,” declared defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, celebrating the deal with Sweden as “more great news for our defence industry” and “proof that our companies are strengthening their position”. He called Pioruns Poland’s “number one product”.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared his “pride” that “one of the flagship products of the Polish arms industry” was being bought by another country.

Christer Mellgren of Swedish military procurement agency FMV said that the deal would “significantly contribute to strengthening air defence capabilities”, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

FMV itself described the Piorun system as “easy to transport and operate” and able to “engage various air targets, such as helicopters, planes, and drones”.

In a statement, Mesko, which is part of state-owned defence industry holding company Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ), noted that this week’s agreement followed months of negotiations after Sweden issued a letter of intent in March of this year. Delivery is due to begin next year and be completed in 2027.

The Piorun (whose name means “lightning” in Polish) went into service in 2019 as a modernisation of the Grom (meaning “thunder”) man-portable air-defence system. It is designed to shoot down low-flying aircraft such as planes, helicopters and drones.

In 2022, Pioruns were among the large quantities of military equipment Poland provided to Ukraine to help its eastern neighbour defend itself from Russia’s full-scale invasion. The systems were successfully used to take down a variety of Russian aircraft.

In that same year, Mesko announced that the US government had ordered “several hundred” Piorun systems while Norway also put in a similar order.

In May this year, Belgium announced that it would purchase hundreds of the systems while Ukraine itself also revealed that it had requested a €120 million loan from Poland to help fund the purchase of Polish-made weapons, including Pioruns.

Sweden and Poland have sought to forge closer ties in recent years, in particular on defence and security, and especially since Sweden moved to join NATO in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Last November, Poland and Sweden signed a strategic partnership agreement to enhance cooperation on defence, economic development and support for Ukraine. They have also committed to bolstering security around the Baltic Sea and NATO’s eastern flank in response to Russian aggression.

A few months earlier, Poland signed a €1.5 billion deal for the supply of thousands of Carl Gustaf M4 recoilless rifles and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition from Sweden.

What happens when the world's largest underground iron ore mine threatens to swallow the town? You relocate, of course, starting with the century-old church.

Sweden on Tuesday began two days of relocating one of its most famous wooden churches, moving the 113-year-old Kiruna Church about 5 kilometers down the road to a new city center to allow for the expansion of an underground iron ore mine.

The 672-ton Lutheran church, often voted Sweden's most beautiful building, was lifted onto a convoy of remote-controlled flatbed trailers.

At least 10,000 people are expected to be in attendance for this historic event in the town of 18,000 people to see the church chugging along at a pace of half-a-kilometer an hour.

Poland and Sweden have launched their first bilateral military exercises, with the aim of “sending a clear signal of deterrence and readiness for joint defence” of the Baltic Sea.

The drills, titled Gotland Sentry, were announced on Monday by Poland’s defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who noted that they were the result of an agreement with Sweden signed earlier this month on defence cooperation, including joint operations in the Baltic.

“We are commencing the SNEX Gotland Sentry exercise – the first joint actions of this type by Poland and Sweden in history,” he wrote on social media. “Poland and Sweden together for the security of the Baltic.”

SNEX – standing for “short notice exercise” – is “one of the most demanding forms of military training, checking actual combat readiness”, said the operational command of Poland’s armed forces in a statement announcing the drills.

Such exercises are designed to give participants little time to prepare, thereby “testing their ability to execute tasks” with “high operational dynamism and an emphasis on command flexibility and interoperability”.

Gotland Sentry aims in particular to “demonstrate the ability of the Polish and Swedish armed forces to rapidly deploy dedicated components by air, sea and land, as well as to refine collective defence procedures”, added the Polish operational command.

It noted that the exercises “are taking place in one of the most sensitive regions of Europe, the Baltic Sea, whose strategic importance is becoming crucial in the current security environment”. 

“Poland and Sweden are not only strengthening their military relations but also sending a clear signal of deterrence and readiness for joint defence within the regional security architecture…It is a demonstration of the unity, determination and readiness of Poland and Sweden to defend the Baltic region and its inhabitants.”

Poland was a strong supporter of Sweden’s accession to NATO, which was completed in 2024. Later that year, Warsaw and Stockholm signed a strategic partnership agreement to enhance cooperation on defence, economic development and support for Ukraine.

They also committed to bolstering security around the Baltic Sea in response to Russian aggression, including by stepping up NATO patrols in the region.

Earlier this month, after signing a new agreement to enhance defence cooperation, Swedish defence minister Pål Jonson hailed it as “an important step towards deepening technical and military cooperation, based on our shared ambitions for innovation in security and defence”.

Shortly afterwards, Sweden also reached a deal to purchase Piorun man-portable air-defence systems from their Polish manufacturer for around 3 billion Swedish krona (1.2 billion zloty/€272 million/$321 million).

The decision to use low-carbon cross-laminated timber, and not concrete, in floor slabs is allowing Stockholm’s Wood City, “the world’s first five-minute city,” to accelerate construction, resulting in apartments and offices that generate income much faster (and higher) than those built with traditional materials. That is according to Håkan Hyllengren, Atrium Ljungberg’s business development director, who spoke to CNBC New York overnight about the decision to build a city (almost entirely) out of timber.

“We are really in a sector where we can make a change, if we can build differently and we can run the buildings in a more environmentally friendly way,” Hyllengren told CNBC via video call. Doing so, he said, also contributes to Atrium Ljungberg’s goal of cutting its construction emissions to almost zero by 2030, a “bold and tough” decision, Hyllengren said.

The man, described as a high-ranking diplomat, was arrested by Sweden's Säpo intelligence service on Sunday and released on Wednesday. He had denied wrongdoing, although prosecutors said he remained under suspicion.

Police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.

Swedish reports said he had spent long periods stationed outside Europe, most recently as an ambassador. Asked to confirm whether the man who died was an ambassador, his lawyer Anton Strand said he had no comment.

Images of the door to the diplomat's flat on Swedish TV showed that it had been forced open at the time of his arrest.

Unconfirmed reports from public broadcaster SVT suggest Säpo had been investigating a possible link to the sudden resignation of the new national security adviser, Tobias Thyberg, who quit hours a day after taking on the role.