kenneth.scot

I went to Sweden for the first time in 2003. I happened to be there during the country’s euro referendum campaign, a tightly fought race perhaps most remembered for the tragic murder of the country’s foreign minister and leading euro membership advocate Anna Lindh less than a week before polling day. Sweden for a long time stood apart from the mainstream process of European integration embodied in the European Communities and subsequent European Union. But following the end of the Cold War, and with the centripetal force of an integrating single market on its doorstep, the country made the decision in 1992 to join first the European Economic Area and then in 1994, by referendum, to join the EU – which it did along with Austria and Finland on 1 January 1995. While Austria and Finland went on to become two of the eleven founding members of the euro in 1999, Sweden again stood aside – though it did not wait long to (re-)broach the question, holding the aforementioned referendum on eur