The Council of Law's criticism is increasingly ignored - the researcher: "Makes it possible for a government that does not want democracy well"

The attention-grabbing cases where governments in Sweden have gone against the Legislative Council's criticism in the face of new legislation are starting to increase.

Examples include the exception for the company Cementa to mine lime on Gotland, the so-called high school law that gave certain unaccompanied refugees temporary residence permits and most recently the law that makes participation in terrorist organizations a criminal offence.

- In cases where serious criticism has been pointed out, it is almost half of the cases in recent times where the Council of Law's criticism has not been followed, says Patrik Bremdal, associate professor of constitutional law at Uppsala University, and continues:

- The risk is that we may get legislation that goes against our constitution, or against human rights.

Or that we get legislation that hands over the power to the courts to fill in. Above all, he is critical of what politicians like to call the "fast track", which he believes is used too lightly.

"Hungary is the classic example"

- If we allow this in normal cases, even if it is not a crisis such as the pandemic.

Then there is the risk that a later government can use this track and define what the public interest is on its own.

- If we then get an illiberal government that also has a majority in the Riksdag, it can quickly push through a lot of legislation that may not be in line with what we call a rule of law or a democracy.

And there are such examples in Europe.

Hungary is the classic example that is usually brought up, where a lot of legislation has been passed very quickly.

The Legislative Council is more careful in how they express themselves, although the member, also the Justice Minister, Stefan Reimer also says that he can sometimes wonder why it has to go so very quickly.

And it is also precisely the time aspect that he believes the Legislative Council is most often critical of.

- When the Legislative Council has been very critical, they have often had very short referral times.

I heard someone who was half a day.

Normally it's maybe 2.5 months or a couple of weeks in each case if it's a bit more urgent bill.