# Peter Hultqvist

# Peter Hultqvist

Carl Anders Peter Hultqvist (born 31 December 1958) is a Swedish politician of the Social Democratic Party who served as Minister for Defence from 2014 to 2022 and a member of the Riksdag for Dalarna County. He has held that seat since 2 October 2006, and was listed as off duty from ordinary parliamentary service from 3 October 2014 to 18 October 2022 while he was minister for defence. The Government Offices' curriculum vitae describes him as born in 1958, married and living in Borlänge, with upper-secondary schooling in the town and work from 1977 as a journalist at *Dala-Demokraten*, *Norrländska Socialdemokraten* and *Aktuellt i Politiken*. Nationalencyklopedin records the same outline: a Social Democratic member of parliament since 2006, defence minister from 2014 to 2022, and a former editor at the party weekly.

Before joining the cabinet he chaired the Riksdag's Committee on Defence from 12 April 2011 to 29 September 2014 and sat on the Defence Commission. He took office as minister for defence in 2014 under Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and was still in the post in August 2022 in the government of [Magdalena Andersson](/people/magdalena-andersson). His Riksdag record shows the ministerial break ending on 18 October 2022, when he again became an ordinary member.

The years in office were shaped by Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and a sharper military climate in the Baltic Sea. Anna Wieslander, writing for the [Atlantic Council](/organizations/atlantic-council), described a "Hultqvist doctrine" that kept Sweden outside NATO while deepening cooperation with the Alliance, the United States and Finland, rebuilding national defence, and arguing for a rules-based security order. In March 2016 his staff told him that problems had appeared after the Swedish Transport Agency outsourced IT services, including risks to the [Swedish Armed Forces](/organizations/swedish-armed-forces)' use of protected identities and civil-registered vehicles, and that the security police had opened an investigation. He did not himself inform Löfven; the Government Offices later told the Committee on the Constitution that he assumed the prime minister's office already had the information through ordinary channels. In July 2017 Löfven removed interior minister Anders Ygeman and infrastructure minister Anna Johansson after what he called an extremely serious breach; Hultqvist remained defence minister.

Hultqvist had said he would not take part in a Swedish application to join NATO. In May 2022 he told *Dagens Nyheter* that he reversed that position at 08:15 on 11 April 2022, in a windowless secure room, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sweden and Finland submitted their official letters of application on 18 May 2022, and Sweden became a NATO member on 7 March 2024, after he had left the government. He chaired the defence committee again from 19 October 2022 until 28 September 2026 and has been its deputy chair since 6 October 2026. He is also deputy chair of the Riksdag delegation to the [NATO Parliamentary Assembly](/organizations/nato-parliamentary-assembly), a member of the War Delegation and a deputy member of the Advisory Council on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs).

## Early life and family

### Childhood in Dalarna

Peter Hultqvist was born on 31 December 1958. The Riksdag records the birth year as 1958. A news profile places the birth in Gävle; a political directory instead lists Åselby in Borlänge municipality, the district in Dalarna where he grew up, in Stora Tuna parish.

His mother, Anna-Inez (née Kallunki; also referred to as Anna), was born in 1935 in Kuusamo in northeastern Finland, roughly level with Haparanda. Her father, Arvi Antti Kallunki in Hultqvist's later account and Arvid Kallunki in local reporting, was killed on 9 September 1941 at Kiestinki, now in Russia, during the Continuation War. That autumn the six-year-old, one of five children, was sent to Sweden as a war child, travelling with an address label around her neck, and was placed in Jämtland, where she went to school. Ordered home after the war, she was allowed two further years after her mother produced a certificate of poverty, then travelled alone through Haparanda and Tornio to a burned district of cabins and dugouts. In 1949 she returned to the same Swedish family and stayed.

Hultqvist has said that as a child he spent every summer in Kuusamo, about 50 kilometres from the Russian border, with relatives who farmed and kept reindeer. He has described hearing about the Soviet Union all his life and has called the experience an asset in his work. He has also said that his paternal grandfather was politically active in Sveg. In October 1973, aged 14, he joined SSU Libertas, a youth club of the [Swedish Social Democratic Party](/organizations/swedish-social-democratic-party) in Borlänge, later recalling that the town then had ten such clubs.

### Schooling and conscription

A curriculum vitae issued by the [Ministry of Defence](/organizations/ministry-of-defence) in 2015 lists compulsory school at Gylle skola in 1975, a technical upper-secondary course at Soltorgsskolan in 1976, and the social-science programme at Hagaskolan in 1977, and no university study.

In June 1978 he began conscription as a rifle soldier at the Dalarna Regiment (I 13) in Falun and left after 57 days. He told *Expressen* that he and other conscripts had organised a strike after officers set them to mowing lawns and garden work, that he had "ended up on the wrong side," and that the step was not pacifism.

*[Svenska Dagbladet](/organizations/svenska-dagbladet)* later reported that a quarrel with officers was not a lawful ground. The application, registered with the Non-Combatant Service Board (Vapenfrinämnden) in August 1978, had to meet the 1966 Act on Non-Combatant Service: a serious personal conviction that using weapons against another person was incompatible with conscript duty. The investigator first recommended refusal. On Christmas Day 1978 Hultqvist signed a statement that weapons use conflicted with his conviction and asked the board to approve the application, which it did in March 1979.

From the partly classified file, *Aftonbladet* reported that in December 1978 he had asked to serve at a day nursery, then at the conscript newspaper *Värnpliktsnytt* or with the fire service, and that a note recorded his statement that he easily developed shin splints. In 1980 he was given clerical duty at Kriminalvårdsstyrelsen, then the central board of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, a post he has called that of an investigator. In 2016 he said the episode had no bearing on his work as defence minister and declined to discuss events from about forty years earlier. From 1977 he worked as a journalist, beginning at *Dala-Demokraten*.

## Journalism

### Party newspapers

A 2015 curriculum vitae from the Ministry of Defence dates Peter Hultqvist's journalism to three titles of the Swedish Social Democratic Party: Dala-Demokraten in 1977–1983, Norrländska Socialdemokraten in 1983–1985 and Aktuellt i Politiken in 1985–1989, then municipal office in Borlänge from 1989.

He has written that freelance film reviews in the mid-1970s led to a substitute of about 30 hours a week as local editor in Älvdalen, also covering Särna and Idre, then the same role in Avesta, with spells in Borlänge and shorter ones in Leksand and Rättvik, and that he afterwards wrote a few editorials under editor-in-chief Bo Degerman. SVT's profile when he became defence minister in October 2014 said the reviews led to reporting and that he worked as a journalist until 1989.

In late winter 1983, aged 25, he was recruited to Norrländska Socialdemokraten in Luleå as political editor and leader writer by Ove Andersson, the political editor-in-chief. Olov Abrahamsson wrote in *Dagens Industri* in 2020 that the leaders moved from industrial and regional policy toward security in the far north, and that he remembered about three years in Norrbotten, set against the ministry's 1983–1985. *Journalisten* gave the same outline: reporter at Dala-Demokraten from 1977, NSD leader writer, and journalism until 1989.

SVT called Aktuellt i Politiken the party's weekly and said he had been editor-in-chief, while the ministry CV says only "journalist" for 1985–1989; *Journalisten* traced that title to his own account, and the paper lists him among editors-in-chief since 1953. In 2024 it reported his account of the night Olof Palme was murdered in 1986: as editor-in-chief he went from Borlänge to Stockholm to change the issue before printing.

### Columns and boards

He kept a byline at Dala-Demokraten while in government. A January 2016 article called the paper "min tidning framför andra" ("my newspaper before any other") and argued that Social Democratic papers still mattered because, in his view, bourgeois media set the Stockholm agenda. There, and in a 2017 speech, he described the local labour movement's purchase in the crisis at A-pressen — owner from 1947 to 1992, and publisher of almost all of Sweden's Social Democratic morning papers — with 3 million kronor raised by unions and workers' communes, ownership through Folkrörelsernas mediastiftelse, and a sale to Mittmedia in 2013, writing of the buyers as "we". The Riksdag lists his title as "Styrelseordförande/Redaktör" ("chair of the board/editor") and does not name the board.

Signed columns continued beside politics. On 30 July 2019 Dala-Demokraten published "Krönika Peter Hultqvist: Begränsa marknadens makt" on its leader pages, and its author index still lists opinion articles in his name through 2026. In November 2020 Sydöstran identified him, then defence minister, as a guest columnist; its author index lists further leader columns into 2026.

## Local politics in Borlänge and Dalarna

### Municipal commissioner

Peter Hultqvist, of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, was a municipal commissioner (*kommunalråd*) in Borlänge from 1989 to 2006, a tenure of 17 years. The curriculum vitae issued by the Ministry of Defence records him as deputy chair of the municipal executive board (*kommunstyrelsen*) from 1989 to 1998 and as its chair, still as commissioner, from 1998 to 2006. SVT and *Aftonbladet* used the same 1998–2006 dates for the chairmanship when he was named defence minister. Borlänge Municipality’s list of executive-board chairs instead dates his term to 1999–2006, after Georg Karlsson (chair 1981–1998) and before Nils Persson (2006–2011).

The government CV also lists him, from 1999 to 2006, as a board member of the municipal energy company Borlänge Energi AB and as chair of Koncernbolaget Borlänge kommun, the holding company for the municipality’s companies. In October 2014 SVT reported that he was still a member of the executive board and chair of its business and planning committee (*näringslivs- och planutskottet*). He left the commissionership after the 2006 election, when he took a seat in the Riksdag. A personal page archived in January 2007 described him as a member of parliament since October and recorded 6,221 preference votes in the parliamentary election, 9.12 percent of the party’s voters in Dalarna, and 971 preference votes, 7.62 percent, in the Borlänge municipal-council election.

### Regional and party offices

From 2002 to 2006 the Ministry of Defence CV lists him as chair of Region Dalarna, which the English text of that CV calls the county’s regional development council. A *samverkansorgan* of that kind was formed in Dalarna County on 1 January 2003, with the county council as a member, and took over from the county administrative board the county development programme, county plans for transport infrastructure, coordination of regional growth programmes and the preparation of structural-fund cases. The Ansvarskommittén secretariat report notes that on 1 January 2006 Kommunförbundet i Dalarna was absorbed into Region Dalarna. SVT has also listed him, without dates, as a former chair of Dalarnas kommunförbund, and as a member of the state committee led by Mats Svegfors that proposed a new regional division of Sweden.

He was elected chair of the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) in Dalarna in 2001, at a meeting in Avesta. The government CV, as published after he became a minister, still treated the district chairmanship as current from 2001 and listed national party offices: alternate member of the party board from 2001 to 2005, ordinary member from 2005 to 2009, and from 2009 an alternate on the party’s executive committee. In January 2019, after 18 years, he told *Dala-Demokraten* that he had long planned to step down at that year’s annual meeting while remaining defence minister. SVT reported that Lars Isacsson, then municipal commissioner in Avesta, succeeded him, with Elin Norén, an opposition commissioner in Region Dalarna, as deputy chair.

The same CV records him as a board member of the housing cooperative HSB Dalarna ekonomisk förening from 1989 to 2009 and as its chair from 2009 to 2014, and, for 2009–2014, as a board member of two companies owned by the association, Dalecarlia Fastighets AB and Bergslagens Mark och Trädgård AB. SVT’s 2014 profile also named earlier posts as chair of the Dalarna district of the Social Democratic youth league (SSU), member of SSU’s national board, member of the county administrative board and of the county school board (*länsskolnämnden*), and chair of ABF Dalarna.

## Member of the Riksdag, 2006–2014

### Election and early committees

Hultqvist entered the Riksdag for Dalarna County at the general election of 17 September 2006 and was an ordinary member from 2 October 2006 until 2 October 2014. He received 6,221 personal votes in the constituency, 9.1 percent of the Swedish Social Democratic Party vote, above the 8 percent share then required for a seat on personal votes; Statistics Sweden records that as the basis of his mandate. The Riksdag register lists him for Dalarna County, seat 166.

From 10 October 2006 to 4 October 2010 he sat on the Committee on Education and was a deputy on the Committee on Industry and Trade, and from 17 October 2006 to 4 October 2010 a deputy on the Swedish delegation to the [Nordic Council](/organizations/nordic-council). After the 2010 election he was on the Committee on the Constitution from 12 October 2010 to 7 April 2011, and a member of the War Delegation from 19 October 2010. He later said that on entering parliament in 2006 he helped form the Swedish–Palestinian Parliamentary Association and chaired it until he became defence minister. In the 2007/08 session he interpellated Foreign Minister [Carl Bildt](/people/carl-bildt) on the situation in Palestine and the West Bank.

### Defence Committee chair

He joined the Committee on Defence on 8 April 2011 and was elected chair on 12 April, succeeding Håkan Juholt, with Cecilia Widegren of the [Moderate Party](/organizations/moderate-party) as vice chair. The chairmanship lasted until 29 September 2014. From 18 May 2011 he was a member of the Riksdag delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and from 14 April 2011 a deputy member of the Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs. In several short periods in 2011–2014 he also sat on the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, at times as deputy chair.

On the cross-party Defence Commission, chaired by Widegren, he was among the members who in 2013 delivered *Vägval i en globaliserad värld* (Ds 2013:33) to Defence Minister [Karin Enström](/people/karin-enstrom). The commission was agreed on the report’s main lines—Hultqvist filed no reservation—and wrote that a state with continuing great-power ambitions near Sweden affected the security environment, while a separate armed attack directly on Sweden remained unlikely for the foreseeable future.

The follow-up, *Försvaret av Sverige – Starkare försvar för en osäker tid* (Ds 2014:20), had its deadline extended to 15 May 2014 so the commission could take account of events in Ukraine. It described Russia’s aggression, and what it called the illegal annexation of Crimea, as the greatest challenge to the European security order in a quarter-century. Hultqvist, Urban Ahlin and Åsa Lindestam backed the report as a guideline but said the Swedish Armed Forces needed more money in 2014–2019 than the government had proposed. With Green and Left members they also objected that late government statements outside the commission had undermined its independence. On 3 March 2014 the three Social Democrats wrote in *Aftonbladet* that the crisis confirmed the case for a greater military presence on Gotland, through air defence, naval units or more exercises.

The May 2014 report said giving and receiving military support—host-nation support, in NATO and European Union usage—required agreements, and asked the government to act promptly. On 28 August 2014 the government decided Sweden would sign a memorandum of understanding with NATO; the agreement of 4 September 2014 was a framework for support during NATO activities on Swedish territory, to take effect only after Sweden notified NATO that the necessary measures were complete. Hultqvist left the chair on 29 September 2014. His ordinary membership ran until 2 October 2014, and from 3 October he was on leave from the Riksdag as Minister for Defence.

## Minister for Defence

### Appointment and cabinets

The Riksdag election of 14 September 2014 left no majority. The Swedish Social Democratic Party won 113 of 349 seats and the [Green Party](/organizations/green-party) 25, 138 together; the [Sweden Democrats](/organizations/sweden-democrats) held 49. On 2 October the chamber approved Stefan Löfven as prime minister, 132–49 with 154 abstentions; fewer than half the members voted no, so the proposal passed. The Sweden Democrats voted against; [the centre](/organizations/the-centre)-right parties and the Left Party abstained.

The Social Democrat–Green cabinet took office the next day. At the opening of the Riksdag on 3 October 2014, Löfven presented the statement of government policy and the ministers, with Peter Hultqvist as minister for defence in place of Karin Enström of the Moderate Party. A Social Democrat elected for Dalarna County, he had chaired the Committee on Defence from 12 April 2011 until 29 September 2014. From 3 October the Riksdag listed him as off duty; substitutes held the seat until he left office.

The statement set the security context. It called Russia’s annexation of Crimea a breach of international law, said Russia’s destabilisation of Ukraine had to stop, and described the eastern neighbourhood as one of Sweden’s greatest challenges. Military non-alignment would continue—“Sweden will not apply for membership of NATO”—but Sweden would not remain passive if an EU or Nordic country were hit by disaster or attack, and expected the same in return. Defence, and public support for it, was to be strengthened, above all by Nordic and Swedish–Finnish cooperation; broad cooperation in the Riksdag was called essential, and the Defence Commission’s proposals were to be carried out. The minority was tested at once. After the budget fell, with the Sweden Democrats voting with the opposition, Löfven called an early election for 22 March 2015. On 27 December the Social Democrats, [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens) and the four-party centre-right Alliance instead made the December Agreement, meant to last until 2022: the opposition would abstain on later budgets and the parties would coordinate pensions, defence and energy.

He remained minister for defence through the rest of Löfven’s premiership and under Magdalena Andersson. On 21 January 2019 Löfven again named him minister for defence when a renewed Social Democrat–Green government was presented at a [Council of State](/organizations/council-of-state) before [Carl XVI Gustaf](/people/carl-xvi-gustaf). The Riksdag register shows continuous appointments from 3 October 2014 until 13:00 on 18 October 2022, re-entered as governments were reformed. That afternoon [Ulf Kristersson](/people/ulf-kristersson)’s government took office at a Council of State at the Royal Palace, with [Pål Jonson](/people/pal-jonson) as minister for defence, and Hultqvist’s Riksdag status returned to serving from 13:01.

At the appointment, reporters asked about his conscription. He told *Expressen* that he had left after a quarrel with officers over lawn-mowing and garden work. A 2016 *Svenska Dagbladet* review found that incomplete. He reported to Dalregementet in Falun on 5 June 1978 and applied for unarmed service on 2 August. The Non-Combatant Board granted it on 15 March 1979 on the statutory ground of a serious personal conviction against using weapons on another person; he then served in the Prison Service. He told the paper that events of about forty years earlier had no bearing on his work as minister and that he would not comment further.

### The defence portfolio

The minister for defence is appointed by the prime minister. Hultqvist headed the Ministry of Defence. The Government of Sweden normally decides collectively, at a meeting of at least five ministers. One clause of the Instrument of Government is specific to this portfolio: business on carrying out, inside the armed forces, statutes or special government decisions may be approved by the head of the responsible ministry, under the prime minister’s supervision and only as far as statute allows. In 2014 the ministry covered total defence, international operations, the law of armed conflict, crisis preparedness and protection against accidents, with about 170 staff. The Swedish Armed Forces are a separate authority, and the minister does not personally command operations.

A state secretary is the minister’s senior aide inside the ministry. On 7 October 2014 the government appointed Jan Salestrand state secretary to Hultqvist. On 22 January 2019, when state secretaries were reappointed, Jan-Olof Lind was named state secretary to the minister for defence.

The post was already framed as cross-bloc work. The 2014 statement said cooperation in the Riksdag was essential and that the Defence Commission’s proposals had to be implemented, and the December Agreement then listed defence among the subjects the government and the former Alliance would handle together. The years in office also covered that strengthening of defence and, on 18 May 2022, Sweden’s NATO application with Finland. The bills, conscription, the Hultqvist doctrine and the membership bid are treated later.

## National defence rebuild

### Defence bills and budgets

On 23 April 2015 Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist, of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, submitted the bill *Försvarspolitisk inriktning – Sveriges försvar 2016–2020*. The Riksdag approved it on 16 June 2015. It said Europe’s security had deteriorated, that Russian leaders were prepared to use military force for political ends, and that the Swedish Armed Forces should turn from expeditionary tasks to national defence and a total defence able to meet an armed attack.

The bill added SEK 10.2 billion (SEK 10,244 million) for 2016–2020 on top of increases already decided, rising from SEK 1,324 million in 2016 to SEK 2,500 million in 2020. A base of SEK 222,601 million for the main military appropriations became SEK 232,845 million. SEK 1.7 billion of the new money covered employer-contribution changes and Fortifikationsverket’s required return, and SEK 1.3 billion moved from international operations to the units. The defence committee welcomed the sum and a stronger presence on Gotland. The 2020 bill later said additions decided for 2016–2020 were about SEK 33 billion, and that the annual military appropriation rose by SEK 10.5 billion from 2016 through 2020.

*Totalförsvaret 2021–2025*, submitted on 14 October 2020 and decided on 15 December 2020, set the military frame in 2021 prices at SEK 66.1 billion in 2021 and SEK 88.7 billion in 2025 (71.1, 76.1 and 82.6 billion in the years between), then prolonged that level. The 2021 figure included SEK 5 billion from that budget; further increases against it were SEK 5, 10, 16 and 22 billion over 2022–2025. Hultqvist told SVT that a deal with the Centre Party and the Liberals was SEK 27 billion over five years, which he called “an increase of 40 percent” and unlike anything since the 1950s. The Moderate Party and the [Christian Democrats](/organizations/christian-democrats) said money after 2025 was still too small. Civil defence was to reach SEK 4.2 billion in 2025, including an extra SEK 3.8 billion that year. Planning assumed Sweden could handle at least three months of regional crisis, part of it at war, and a 2023 Defence Commission review was to check the result.

### Conscription and force structure

On 2 March 2017 the government restored conscription for women and men. The Armed Forces were to train at least 4,000 people a year in 2018 and 2019, with enrolment from 1 July 2017 and training from 1 January 2018. About 13,000 were to be assessed each year and chosen, as far as possible, for motivation; equal liability for women and men dated from 2010. The ministry told the BBC the first cohort would be taken from people born in 1999, a fraction of more than 90,000 reaching conscription age annually. Hultqvist said full units needed conscripts as well as volunteers.

The 2020 bill raised wartime positions to about 90,000 and basic training to 8,000 conscripts a year from 2025, which the Defence Commission had described as roughly double the 2019 volume, with at least nine months’ service. Every wartime unit was to be able to begin its tasks within a week of mobilisation.

From 2018 the 2015 bill placed a mechanised company and a tank company on Gotland, citing the island’s place on routes across the Baltic Sea, and enlarged the Home Guard there. A government decision of 13 December 2017 reopened a regiment in Visby on 1 January 2018, at first about 350 people; the old regiment had closed in 2005. The 2021–2025 decision restored units at Arvidsjaur (K 4), Gothenburg (Amf 4), Uppsala (F 16), Kristinehamn (A 9), Falun (I 13) and Sollefteå (I 21, with a detachment in Östersund), Falun and Sollefteå by 2022. The army was to organise two mechanised brigades, start a third and a reduced motorised brigade for Stockholm, and reinforce Gotland under a division staff. Submarines were to rise from four to five by keeping a third Gotland-class boat; two Blekinge-class boats would later replace the last Södermanland-class submarine, and Gothenburg would gain an amphibious battalion. Six Gripen squadrons would remain, four moving to the JAS 39E and two keeping JAS 39C/D past 2030. The 2015 bill had already begun two new submarines and a medium-range air-defence purchase. On 2 August 2018 the government approved that purchase as the US Patriot, with a capability against tactical ballistic missiles, inside existing plans, and authorised the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration to sign.

The Swedish National Audit Office judged the 2016–2020 army rebuild only partly effective: units lagged, brigades were not the focus of direction, the 2015 decision was underfunded for its aims, and the Gripen E and new submarine displaced other equipment. A 2022 audit found a lasting shortage of full-time squad leaders, soldiers and sailors, who left early when equipment, infrastructure and officers were lacking and who were mostly replaced only once a year from the conscript intake.

## The Hultqvist doctrine

### Elements of the doctrine

The “Hultqvist doctrine” (Swedish: *Hultqvistdoktrinen* or *Hultqvistlinjen*) is the analysts’ name for Sweden’s security and defence line under Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. In *Defence Studies*, Anna Wieslander treats it as the post-2014 implementation of a little-noticed 2009 policy, and asks whether it was non-alignment or integration. That year’s defence decision included a unilateral solidarity declaration: Sweden would not remain passive if another European Union member or Nordic country suffered a disaster or an attack, expected the same in return, and should be able both to give and to receive military support. Repeated in the 2015 defence bill, the declaration was a political statement, not a treaty, and military non-alignment remained.

Wieslander, who also outlined the line for the Atlantic Council, describes three elements. The first was rebuilding national deterrence and territorial defence after the post-Cold War cuts. In 2015 Hultqvist called a stronger national defence combined with deeper military cooperation “the natural evolution of non-alignment.” Speeches later presented national capability and international cooperation as the two pillars of policy, tied to higher spending for 2016–2020 and 2021–2025 and to a force meant to meet an armed attack.

The second element was a patchwork of cooperation without membership or Article 5 guarantees. The closest track was with Finland, aimed at combined action in crisis and conflict. Parallel arrangements with the United States, other Nordic states through NORDEFCO, and further partners formed what he called a “security web” meant to raise the threshold for conflict. At the 2014 Wales summit, NATO offered enhanced opportunities to five partners that had contributed heavily to operations—Australia, Finland, Georgia, Jordan and Sweden—and Hultqvist later cited that status as a way to deepen cooperation for a possible regional crisis. A host-nation support agreement with NATO was part of preparing to give and receive military help; it was not a mutual-defence commitment, and non-membership still blocked joint operational planning with the alliance.

The third element was support for a rules-based order, with Russia named as the driver of a worse Baltic Sea security situation. Hultqvist argued that Russian force in Georgia and Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, and heavier military activity in the Baltic region challenged the order small states rely on, and he called international law Sweden’s “first line of defence.” He kept non-alignment as the stated foundation—“Sweden has chosen to be militarily non-aligned”—and presented cooperation as an evolution of that choice rather than a route into the alliance.

### Debate and criticism

Wieslander’s assessment rejects that official reading. Drawing on neoclassical realism, she scores the doctrine for novelty and for integration—openness, inclusiveness and comprehensiveness—against a “screening” dimension that would limit dependence on a great power. She finds high change in defence and international cooperation, and concludes that what remained of traditional non-alignment was marginal: Sweden was integrating into collective defence, an “informal ally” of NATO in the Baltic region from about 2016, while still refusing membership. She traces the refusal to domestic constraints—Social Democratic party politics, historical lessons, and public opinion—and notes that the informal status was regionally limited, shut out of NATO decision-making and joint planning, and dependent on circumstances.

Jacob Westberg had already called the wider pattern an *alliansfri allianspolitik*, a non-aligned alliance policy. In his account, non-alignment now mainly barred binding duties to help others if attacked, while solidarity pledges and preparations to give and receive help undercut the credibility of staying non-aligned.

Parties that wanted membership earlier made a related argument. In 2021 Moderate Party spokesmen Hans Wallmark and Pål Jonson wrote that five Riksdag parties favoured at least a Finnish-style “NATO option,” while the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Left Party and the Greens did not, and that internal party reasons kept the Social Democrats from opening membership. They argued that the new arrangements contained no binding guarantees, that defence planning assumed help from NATO countries, and that partner ties could not replace collective guarantees and joint planning. An editorial answering Hultqvist’s claim that cooperation would make outside support more credible asked why that logic stopped short of joining. Wieslander had warned in 2017 that the build-up was slow and thinly funded, with spending at risk of falling below 1 per cent of GDP, and that failure to strengthen national defence would erode the confidence the line had earned.

The party limit was stated in public. At the Social Democrats’ November 2021 congress, Hultqvist said there would be no NATO membership for Sweden while he was defence minister. That non-alignment core ended in 2022. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and as Finland moved toward the alliance, he told SVT that the platform of two non-aligned countries planning together had fallen away and that staying outside would leave Sweden weaker in Nordic cooperation. Wieslander treats those 2022 decisions as the end of the informal-ally substitute for a formal alliance.

## International cooperation and NATO

### Finland, the Nordics and the United States

On 9 July 2018 in Turku, Hultqvist and Finnish defence minister Jussi Niinistö signed a memorandum on defence cooperation between Sweden and Finland covering peace, crisis and war, with no predetermined limit on how far it could be deepened. It provided for operational and tactical planning for combined action, including defence of territorial integrity and collective self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, but it created no mutual defence obligation: any operation still required a separate national decision.

The same years added other northern partnerships. On 30 June 2017, at Karlberg Castle in Stockholm, Hultqvist and [Niinistö](/people/sec-sauli-niinisto) joined British defence secretary [Michael Fallon](/people/michael-fallon) in bringing Sweden and Finland into the United Kingdom-led Joint Expeditionary Force, alongside Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Norway. Hultqvist said the force would complement bilateral and multilateral cooperation "focusing both on our close vicinity and a broader global agenda." On 14–15 August 2020 he visited Poland and discussed closer bilateral cooperation with defence minister [Mariusz Błaszczak](/people/mariusz-blaszczak), and in September 2021 Sweden, Denmark and Norway signed a trilateral statement of intent on enhanced operational defence cooperation.

With the United States, Hultqvist and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter signed a statement of intent on 8 June 2016. The text was not legally binding. It set out interoperability, training and exercises, armaments, research and development, and multinational operations, and noted that exercises would also send a political signal. On 8 May 2018 Hultqvist, Niinistö and Secretary of Defense [James Mattis](/people/jim-mattis) signed a further non-binding trilateral statement at the Pentagon, focused on joint exercises and interoperability. Hultqvist said afterwards that the text would make it easier to plan that activity and could add stability in Sweden's part of Europe. Aurora 17, from 11 to 29 September 2017, was the largest Swedish armed-forces exercise in 23 years: some 19,000 Swedish personnel, about a quarter of them Home Guard, staff from about 40 agencies, and units from Finland, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, France and the United States. Hultqvist said it sent a security-policy signal and raised the threshold against incidents.

### From non-alignment to the membership application

Sweden joined NATO's [Partnership for Peace](/organizations/partnership-for-peace) in 1994 and kept its policy of military non-alignment. The Wales summit declaration of 5 September 2014 recorded that defence ministers had met five partners making particularly significant contributions to NATO operations—Australia, Finland, Georgia, Jordan and Sweden—to deepen dialogue and cooperation under enhanced opportunities in the Partnership Interoperability Initiative. A host-nation support memorandum with NATO's strategic commands was signed in Newport on 4 September 2014 by Supreme Commander Sverker Göranson and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Philip Breedlove, following a government decision on 28 August 2014 to sign. It entered into force on 1 July 2016. NATO later described the memorandum as allowing logistical support to allied forces on or transiting Swedish territory during exercises or in a crisis, subject to a national decision.

At the Swedish Social Democratic Party congress in Gothenburg in November 2021 he said there would be no membership application for as long as Sweden had a Social Democratic government. SVT reported that he had told the congress there would be no Swedish membership while he was defence minister, and *Dagens Nyheter* wrote that he had guaranteed he would not take part in an application.

Russia's full-scale [invasion of Ukraine](/facts/2022-russian-invasion-of-ukraine) on 24 February 2022 undercut that position. Hultqvist told SVT that Swedish-Finnish planning beyond peacetime had rested on both countries remaining non-aligned; once Finland moved toward NATO, he said, Sweden would be weaker in Nordic operational planning and in its other defence relationships. In a *Dagens Nyheter* interview published on 15 May 2022 he said he had made up his mind at 08:15 on 11 April, in a windowless room secured against eavesdropping, after the options for a militarily non-aligned Sweden had been worked through. That Sunday evening the Social Democrats announced support for an application. On 16 May the government, with broad support in the Riksdag, decided to apply, and on 18 May Sweden submitted its letter together with Finland. The same day Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin received Hultqvist at the Pentagon; the U.S. readout called the Swedish decision historic and linked the talks to the invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden was not yet a member when Hultqvist left office. Accession protocols were signed in July 2022, but by late September only Turkey and Hungary had still to ratify. He ceased to be defence minister when Ulf Kristersson's government took office on 18 October 2022 and Pål Jonson succeeded him. Sweden deposited its instrument of accession in Washington on 7 March 2024 and became a full member that day.

## Transport Agency data scandal

### The outsourcing and the briefing

In 2015 the Swedish Transport Agency contracted IBM Svenska AB to run its IT systems, including the road-traffic register. The agreement was signed on 14 April 2015. IBM took over operations on 1 November, but staff without Swedish security clearance at IBM and its subcontractors had access from May. Reporting said technicians in the Czech Republic, Serbia and Romania handled material that could include the driving-licence database, witness-protection records, and information on intelligence, police and military personnel and vehicles. The agency said it held no military data and saw no improper dissemination; the Swedish Armed Forces said staff, vehicle and planning details could have been included. Director-general Maria Ågren approved departures from security-protection, personal-data and secrecy rules from 20 May 2015. The Swedish Security Service began supervision in September 2015, called in November for immediate security measures, and on 26 January 2016 opened a preliminary investigation into negligence with secret information. Ågren left in January 2017 and in June accepted a summary fine order for that offence, which SVT reported as 70,000 kronor in day-fines. The agency answered to the infrastructure minister, not the defence minister.

Justice Ministry officials told the Defence Ministry on 19 February 2016. Hultqvist’s state secretary was informed on 25 February, and officials briefed him on 9 March. The Government Offices told the Committee on the Constitution that the briefing was general: outsourcing had created problems, there were risks to the Armed Forces’ qualified protected identities and civilian-registered vehicles, and Säpo had opened an investigation. Hultqvist told the committee that the Armed Forces had already limited the damage and were not seeking a government decision, and that his officials would keep following the case. He said he took no further step because the Justice and Enterprise ministries were responsible and because, under routines for security information, he assumed the Prime Minister’s Office already knew. He did not personally tell Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. That office was informed in December 2016, and Löfven was briefed on 12 January 2017. He later said information of this kind should have reached him around February 2016.

### No-confidence vote

After the case became public in July 2017, the centre-right Alliance and the Sweden Democrats said they would seek no confidence in Interior Minister Anders Ygeman, Infrastructure Minister Anna Johansson and Hultqvist. On 27 July Löfven removed Ygeman and Johansson and kept Hultqvist, arguing that he did not answer for the agency and that the military had acted early. Hultqvist refused to resign. He told [Sveriges Radio](/organizations/sveriges-radio) the reasons were not strong enough, and that his ministry’s task had been to see that the Armed Forces took the necessary measures.

The Moderate Party’s Jessica Polfjärd tabled the motion on 14 September 2017, with at least 35 members behind it. The Riksdag voted on 19 September. At least 175 of 349 members had to vote yes. The result was 135 in favour, 137 against and 58 abstentions, with 19 absent, so the motion failed. Yes votes came from the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Allan Widman and one independent. The Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Green Party voted no. The Centre Party, most of the Liberals and the Left Party abstained. Moderate, Sweden Democrat and Christian Democrat speakers called the handling passive: since March 2016, they said, he had neither informed the prime minister, raised the matter in the security-policy council, nor told parliament. The Centre Party and [the Liberals](/organizations/the-liberals), parties to the July threat, said later facts changed their view. The Prime Minister’s Office had held the information, and Löfven’s state secretary Emma Lennartsson had resigned. They still called Hultqvist’s conduct blameworthy and wanted the constitutional inquiry to continue, but they abstained.

In report 2017/18:KU20 the committee described unlawful handling of security-sensitive information. It criticised the Justice and Enterprise ministries for working too separately, assigned responsibility to Ygeman and Johansson for not passing information on, and held Löfven ultimately responsible for routines that failed. It found that Hultqvist’s task was the effect on the Armed Forces, that he had acted reasonably, and that he had reason to assume the Prime Minister’s Office had been told. His hearing on 23 April 2018 was closed.

## Return to parliament after 2022

Hultqvist left the defence ministry on 18 October 2022, the day Ulf Kristersson's government took office, and the Riksdag again records him from that date as an ordinary member for Dalarna County. He has been a member of the War Delegation since 11 October 2022 and a deputy member of the Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs since 19 October 2022. From 26 October 2022 he has been deputy chair of the Riksdag delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, except for 10–22 April 2024, when he was an ordinary member of the delegation. Altinget describes him as the Swedish Social Democratic Party's defence-policy spokesperson. In September 2025 he said he was available for re-election and that "it is the party that decides"; the Riksdag lists the seat as running until 23 September 2030.

### Defence Committee

He chaired the Committee on Defence from 19 October 2022 until 28 September 2026, and has been its deputy chair since 6 October 2026.

The committee prepared the 2025–2030 total defence bill, the first full defence decision after Sweden joined NATO. The government proposed more than 170 billion kronor extra for the armed forces and 37.5 billion for civil defence by 2030, spending of 2.6 per cent of GDP in 2028, four brigades largely ready by 2030, and about 10,000 conscripts in 2030, rising to about 12,000 in 2032–2035. On 17 December 2024 the Riksdag approved that line. The committee had recommended rejecting every motion, and the chamber did so. Hultqvist and other Social Democrats had asked that the brigades be prioritised for 2030, that 12,000 conscripts be in training by 2032, that another submarine be studied, and that a next-generation fighter follow Swedish and Nordic requirements. Social Democrats were among the parties behind the report's 45 reservations.

He chaired the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence from 19 May to 4 June 2026. On 4 June the Riksdag authorised up to 1,200 Swedish personnel, through 31 December 2026, for NATO's forward presence in Finland.

### Opposition commentary

On 28 December 2024, after four cables between Finland and Estonia were damaged and investigated as aggravated sabotage, he told SVT that hybrid activity in the Baltic Sea would not stop and that NATO needed one strategy rather than a reaction to each incident. He urged the government to open consultations under Article 4. Foreign Minister [Maria Malmer Stenergard](/people/maria-malmer-stenergard) wrote that the government "rules nothing out", while investigations in Sweden and Finland continued.

After drones closed Copenhagen Airport, he said on 23 September 2025 that drones from a foreign power sent to disrupt, spy or act hostilely should be shot down, because "the great risk is to yield and accept what is going on". [Mette Frederiksen](/people/mette-frederiksen) did not rule out Russia; Pål Jonson said a breach of Swedish airspace could be engaged.

On 11 January 2026 he said U.S. pressure over Greenland could have "very long-term negative effects" on NATO, and that talk of enough having been done was not "the real world". Kristersson called that "pure nonsense". On 10 March, after Sweden accepted talks on French nuclear weapons, Hultqvist said NATO's collective deterrent against Russia was "the weight in the deterrence", that the weapons justified caution, and that the Social Democrats were "not seeking confrontation".

On 16 October 2026 he wrote in Altinget that a Russian letter accusing NATO of planning to isolate Kaliningrad, and threatening nuclear use, was groundless but a test of cohesion. The reply, he argued, had to be unity, continued support for Ukraine and "strong and sustained deterrence", not "submission or division".

## Publications, positions and personal life

### Books and other political positions

On 29 June 2020 Tankesmedjan Tiden, linked to the Swedish Social Democratic Party, published *Hundra procent socialdemokrati*: 29 texts—new openings, one unpublished speech, and selected columns, speeches and articles—plus an afterword by Göran Greider. Tiden and *Värmlands Folkblad* describe it as a critique of neoliberalism and a defence of non-profit public welfare, aimed at party debate beyond the January Agreement; much had run in *Dala-Demokraten*. *Aftonbladet*’s social-democratic editorial page wrote that Hultqvist then stood well to the left, rhetorically and politically, in the party leadership and the government.

In June 2025 Medströms Bokförlag issued *När allt förändras* (286 pages, ISBN 978-91-7329-194-1), opening with the 2014 submarine alert in the Stockholm archipelago, operation Örnen, and his eight years as defence minister. Robert Björkenwall in *Sydöstran* read it as an account of cooperation with Finland and of the 2022 NATO application, which Hultqvist writes he had ruled out too firmly in November 2021. Jonas Gummesson in *Dagens Nyheter* wrote that self-interest weighs on the memoir and that the earlier NATO opposition should have been called a misjudgment.

From entering the Riksdag in 2006 until he became defence minister in 2014, he chaired the Swedish–Palestinian parliamentary association, which he said he helped found. He told *Falu-Kuriren* that it used interpellations to foreign minister Carl Bildt on discrimination, the barrier and settlements, and that a two-state solution would serve both Israel and the Palestinians. He denied personal credit for Sweden’s recognition of Palestine, citing a 2009 party congress, while saying he had pressed the issue inside the party. After meeting [Mahmoud Abbas](/people/mahmoud-abbas) he called him committed to peace and stronger democracy, and said Israeli willingness to negotiate had fallen since the killing of Yitzhak Rabin.

### Honours and private life

During Abbas’s February 2015 visit, Hultqvist was the only Swedish minister to receive what *Falu-Kuriren* called Palestine’s “Order of Merit,” awarded for exceptional efforts for the Palestinian cause. He linked it to work begun in the Social Democratic Youth League. Olof Palme received the order posthumously, as did [Left Party](/organizations/left-party) MP Torbjörn Björklund.

An August 2017 *Nya Wermlands-Tidningen* editorial criticized him for wearing the decoration publicly, including at a royal dinner that March, calling the display political. It described Abbas’s rule as a dictatorship on the West Bank after an expired presidential term, and asked what the reaction would have been to an Israeli honour.

On 3 April 2018 President Sauli Niinistö, grand master of the Finnish orders, conferred the Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion of Finland on Hultqvist as defence minister.

At a 25 April 2017 hearing of the Committee on the Constitution, Hultqvist said his permanent, registered home was in Borlänge, while he rented a flat in Stockholm as minister. In January 2020 he and Lena Hjort Hultqvist, a Social Democrat who chaired Borlänge’s upper-secondary and labour-market committee, filed a joint divorce application with Falu District Court to be decided without a reconsideration period; he declined to comment. He holds the amateur-radio call sign SM4HCF: Televerket issued class-C certificate 11493 on 26 August 1975, and he has described the hobby as contact with the world.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/peter-hultqvist