Ulf Holm

Ulf Peter Holm (born 4 June 1969 in Staffanstorp) is a Swedish politician of the Green Party (Miljöpartiet de gröna). He studied public administration at Lund University. His parliamentary career has been tied to Skåne County, where the Riksdag records him for the constituency of Skåne County South (Skåne läns södra).

In the 1995 election to the European Parliament, the Green Party received 17.2 percent of the valid votes and turnout was 41.6 percent. Holm was one of the party's four members of that Parliament, serving from 9 October 1995 to 19 July 1999 in the Green Group, and he sat on the group's bureau from 1 February 1996 to 28 January 1997. He was a member of the Committee on Research, Technological Development and Energy from October 1995 to January 1997 and then a substitute, a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control from January 1997 until the end of the term, and a member of the delegations for relations with South-East Asia and Korea and, later, South Asia and SAARC. As rapporteur he handled the Parliament's response to the European Commission's strategy for energy cooperation between Europe and Asia, and the European Atomic Energy Community's accession to the Science and Technology Centre in Ukraine.

He was an ordinary member of the Riksdag from 30 September 2002 to 29 September 2014. He was a member of the Labour Market Committee through the 2002–2006 term and again from 10 October 2006 until 4 October 2010, and a member of the Committee on European Union Affairs from 8 October 2002 to 12 October 2010 and from 16 June 2011 to 29 September 2014. The Riksdag lists him as a Green Party group leader from 1 October 2008 to 4 October 2010; Altinget identifies Mikaela Valtersson as the colleague with whom he shared that role. On 4 October 2010, at the new chamber's first sitting, Valtersson nominated him for second deputy speaker on the ground that the Green Party was the third-largest party, with 25 seats to the Sweden Democrats' 20. Björn Söder nominated Mikael Jansson and asked for a secret ballot, arguing that the Sweden Democrats formed a third political bloc. Holm received 325 votes to Jansson's 20, with two blank ballots, and held the post until 29 September 2014. During the same term he was a member of the Parliamentary Council of the Swedish National Audit Office, from 1 January 2011 to 29 September 2014.

On 7 October 2014 Altinget reported that Holm, coming from the second deputy speakership, had been appointed state secretary to Per Bolund, minister for financial markets and consumer affairs, at the Ministry of Finance. He later returned to the chamber as a substitute, covering for Emma Berginger in 2023 and serving again from 10 October 2025 to 10 May 2026. The Green Party's own profile lists him as chair of the party in Skåne and as a member of the national party board.

Early life and education

Ulf Peter Holm, the Swedish Green Party politician, was born on 4 June 1969. The European Parliament biographical record preserved by ParlTrack lists the same date and the place Staffanstorp. The directory Altinget instead gives Lund as his place of birth, while the Riksdag publishes only the year 1969. The places are close together in south-western Skåne: the municipal centre of Staffanstorp lies about 10 kilometres from Lund and about 15 kilometres from Malmö, on a cultivated plain whose economy is shaped by those cities.

In 1969 the parish lay in Malmöhus County. A government bill proposed that Kristianstad County and Malmöhus County be joined on 1 January 1997 into Skåne County. Holm’s later accounts keep him in the same district. On SVT’s 2022 election-compass form he called himself a cheerful man in his fifties living in Lund, wrote that he had always been interested in politics, and said he had been able to work with it throughout his adult life, including as a member of the European Parliament from 1995 to 1999 and of the Riksdag from 2002 to 2014. The party’s candidate page also places him on the list for Lund municipal council. Published profiles do not name his parents or describe his schooling before university.

On that SVT form he wrote that he had studied on the förvaltningslinjen, the public-administration programme, at Lund University, but never finished, because politics attracted him more. Altinget records the same studies as “studies in administration (Lund University).” An English curriculum formerly on the European Parliament site, retained in ParlTrack’s change log, instead reads “Studies in political science (Lund University).” The programme was a national degree line. In 1983 the Riksdag’s education committee proposed that the government be authorised to establish, from 1 July 1983, a new förvaltningslinje of 140 points, in place of the existing administration line, the line for public administration and the social-planning line. The National Board of Universities and Colleges had proposed an 80-point base block and a 60-point specialisation. Holm has not published his years of enrolment, and these profiles record no completed degree.

A different Ulf Holm is chair professor of international business in the Department of Business Studies at Uppsala University, working on multinational companies and the internationalisation of firms.

Public sources say little about family life. In October 2007, reporting that the Riksdag then had nine openly homosexual members, the magazine QX included Holm; the article itself was about the Moderate Tomas Tobé, who told a party congress that he hoped one day to marry. In October 2010, just after Holm became second deputy speaker, QX noted that the candidate site Valpejl listed him as single, and he said he hoped the post might improve his chances of meeting someone. No published profile names a spouse or children, or a particular occasion on which he made his sexuality public.

Green Youth and municipal politics

Grön Ungdom, the youth organization of Miljöpartiet de gröna, was formed several years after the party. Miljöpartiet, founded in Sweden in 1981, had at first preferred not to add the usual side organizations, treating a separate youth wing as a likely radical alibi without real influence. Younger members instead gathered in local circles and in a loose national contact network with no statutes, budget or programme. On 28–30 November 1986 that network constituted Grön Ungdom at Sollentunaholm, a manor in Sollentuna Municipality outside Stockholm. The 1987 party congress recognized it as the official youth organization and, the same year, it launched the members’ paper New Zine, soon renamed Nisse Hult; a national board followed in 1988, a federation of local branches replaced the national body from 1990 to 1992, own congress delegates arrived in 1995, and Maria Wetterstrand and Paulo Silva became the first språkrör in 1996. The youth wing was to carry the parent party’s green politics rather than a programme of its own, an arrangement kept until the 2016 annual meeting.

Holm, born in 1969, was in his teens at the founding. He has written that he moved into Lund after gymnasium, in 1987/88, and stayed. A party photograph of the November 1986 meeting names Per Ängqvist, Ulf Söderström, Sophie Löfgren and Tove Lindén, and does not identify him. His later biographical note records the move to Lund, a substitute council seat and the 1995 European election, and does not describe a founding role or a titled office in the youth wing. In a May 2008 profile, Fokus described the Skåne member of the Riksdag, and former member of the European Parliament, as an honorary member of Grön Ungdom, without dating the honour. He is also an essayist in Före vår tid, the history the organization issued in 2019, around its thirtieth anniversary, edited by former språkrör Magda Rasmusson and Hanna Lidström. Other contributors include early officers such as Per Ängquist and Yvonne Ruwaida, elected chair in 1994.

His first formal foothold in elected politics was in Lund Municipality. At the municipal elections of 18 September 1994, Miljöpartiet took 6,082 votes there, 9.8 percent of 61,949 valid ballots, and 6 of 65 council seats — the same seat total as in 1991, when its share was 7.8 percent. A party chronology citing Statistics Sweden puts the national municipal vote that year at 5.30 percent, 616 seats in 242 municipalities. Turnout in Lund was 86.6 percent. Under the municipal electoral law then in force, the council term ran from 1 November of the election year. Holm has written that he became a substitute (ersättare), not an ordinary councillor, and that he soon resigned when he was elected to the European Parliament in September 1995.

The election of 17 September 1995 was Sweden’s first direct vote for that parliament after accession to the European Union. Miljöpartiet won 17.22 percent, 462,092 votes and four seats. The government’s review of the personal-vote trial lists Holm third on the party’s candidate order, with 3,121 preference votes, below the party threshold of 23,104; the list was set aside only when a candidate cleared that barrier. Birger Schlaug, then a party språkrör, later counted him among the four Green members of the term, with Per Gahrton, Inger Schörling and MaLou Lindholm, the order given in the party’s own chronology of the result. Holm has dated his mandate from the September 1995 election until the election of 1999.

European Parliament

Election and political group

Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995, and held its first direct election to the European Parliament on 17 September 1995 under a law written for that year. The country was a single constituency, and 41.6 percent of those entitled to vote took part. The Green Party (Miljöpartiet de gröna) won 17.2 percent of the valid ballots and four of Sweden's 22 seats.

Ulf Holm sat from 9 October 1995 to 19 July 1999, the end of the 1994–1999 term. The other Green members for those dates were Per Gahrton, who had already sat from 1 January to 8 October 1995, Inger Schörling and MaLou Lindholm. In 1999 the Greens fell to 9.5 percent and two seats; Holm's record stops at the end of the term, while Gahrton and Schörling were returned.

He belonged throughout to The Green Group in the European Parliament, which in 1999 joined the European Free Alliance in the Greens–European Free Alliance. He was on the group's bureau from 1 February 1996 to 28 January 1997 and an ordinary member outside that interval.

Committees and delegations

From 12 October 1995 he was a full member of the Committee on Research, Technological Development and Energy, a substitute on the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media, and a member of the delegation for ASEAN, South-east Asia and the Republic of Korea. From 16 January 1997 he was instead a full member of the Committee on Budgetary Control, only a substitute on the energy committee, and a member of the delegation for South Asia and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), all through 19 July 1999. He kept the Asia-energy report after that change, and at the April 1997 committee vote is listed as present in place of Nuala Ahern.

Reports and plenary work

The energy committee named him rapporteur on 2 October 1996 for the European Commission communication "Europe-Asia cooperation strategy for energy" (COM(96)0308), sent to Parliament on 20 September 1996. ) Adopted by the Commission on 18 July 1996, it proposed a permanent energy dialogue and more Community funding, with three stated aims: supply security in Asia and Europe, openings for European firms in Asian energy markets, and protection of the global environment. The committee adopted his motion for a resolution unanimously on 16 April 1997 as report A4-0134/97.

In the debate on 15 May 1997 he backed a dialogue useful to both sides, but said the communication lacked the concrete steps the Council had requested, was poorly coordinated inside the Commission, and read mainly as a brief for European firms. He focused on large dams and on nuclear power, cited earlier resolutions on dams in India, China and Malaysia, and said he would orally drop a naming of the Bakun dam so the criticism stayed general. Speaking for himself on the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, he said Parliament and the committee had not been told of the plans, opposed what he called Union financing of two nuclear plants at 75 million ECU, and preferred renewables. His explanatory statement, distinct from the committee motion, says there is no safe use of nuclear energy, puts Bakun's damage at nearly 70,000 hectares of rainforest and 10,000 people displaced, and records ECU 15 million for the Korean organization in 1996.

Parliament adopted the resolution on 16 May 1997, published in Official Journal C 167 of 2 June 1997. It welcomes the dialogue, wants both a general framework and a country-by-country approach, and calls for treaties on verifiable carbon-dioxide cuts where joint implementation has worked. It asks for renewables, smaller hydropower schemes, energy saving, and rural supplies that would lessen the health risks of firewood and dung, particularly for women. On nuclear programmes already running it asks only that the Union support maximum safety in peaceful use — not the bar on the Korean project that Holm had argued for — and it requests a Green Paper on energy cooperation in Asia, starting with Central Asia.

His other report as responsible rapporteur was on accession by the European Community and Euratom, as one party, to the Science and Technology Centre in Ukraine. Consulted on 6 March 1998, the committee appointed him on 17 March. Regulation (EC) No 1766/98 dates the underlying agreement to 25 October 1993 and names the parties as Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and the United States. Holm's report describes the centre as a route into civilian work for scientists who had been involved with weapons of mass destruction, Ukraine having stayed outside the Moscow centre. Holm wrote that a protocol of 7 July 1997 allowed the Communities in, with Sweden leaving the governing board for a shared Council-and-Commission seat, cited Commission figures of 85 funded projects worth $18.5 million and more than 1,300 scientists plus 3 million ECU from Tacis, and recommended approval despite poor information to Parliament.

The committee adopted the draft unanimously on 23 June 1998 and waived a plenary debate. Its amendments would have had Parliament informed before governing-board meetings and consulted before the Council set some Community positions. Parliament adopted the opinion on 2 July 1998. ) The regulation of 30 July 1998 approved accession without those changes: the Council of the European Union, not Parliament, is to be informed before board meetings.

He is also recorded as draftsman of the energy committee's opinions on environmental taxes and charges in the single market (COM(97)9, appointed 27 May 1997), taken up in a resolution of 15 July 1998 on Karl Erik Olsson's report, and on the Community statistical programme for 1998–2002 (appointed 20 May 1998), which became Council Decision 1999/126/EC. ) ) /oj/eng) The same list gives him opinions on carbon dioxide from cars, a maritime strategy, learning in the information society, and a change to the European Environment Agency's regulation.

Party organization, 1999–2002

Holm’s seat in the European Parliament ran from 9 October 1995 to 19 July 1999. He then worked in the national organization of Miljöpartiet de gröna under statutes adopted in April 1992 and revised through 1999. Congress was the highest decision-making body and met once a year, in April, May or June. Between congresses the partistyrelse led the party’s work, supported the spokespersons, prepared congress and the förtroenderåd, carried out congress decisions and managed assets. It was elected for one year, an odd number of 19 to 25 members with no substitutes, and at most one third could sit in the Riksdag at once. One woman and one man, chosen before the rest of the board, sat as ordinary members; after each congress the board appointed from itself a seven-member arbetsutskott, including the spokespersons, to prepare business and carry out decisions. The party secretary was permanently adjunct, not a full member, and the statutes created no separately elected office of sammankallande.

At Kristianstad on 13–15 May 1999, Lotta N. Hedström and Birger Schlaug were elected, Hedström succeeding Marianne Samuelsson; at Vadstena on 1–4 June 2000, Matz Hammarström replaced Schlaug and served with Hedström until 2002. In Sundsvall on 9–12 May 2002 a board proposal for one ordinary spokesperson and two deputies received 105 votes to 71, short of the two-thirds majority a statute change required. Maria Wetterstrand, unopposed, and Peter Eriksson, who beat Carl Schlyter by 114 votes to 65, were elected for a term the party dates 2002–2011.

Press reports from the end of the period call Holm the board’s sammankallande and a member of the arbetsutskott. On 1 October 2002, during talks with the Social Democratic government, he told Svenska Dagbladet, in remarks carried by Aftonbladet, that ministerial posts still mattered not as positions in themselves but as a means of getting green policy through, and that he was prepared to compromise. Aftonbladet still used the title for him on 13 May 2005.

In the general election of 15 September 2002 Miljöpartiet received 246,392 votes. Valmyndigheten’s later summary gives 4.65 percent and 17 of 349 seats; the 2002 table, to one decimal, shows 4.6 percent, up 0.1 points from 1998, and 17 seats of which 11 were adjustment seats, a net gain of one. Turnout was 80.11 percent. In Skåne läns södra, in Skåne County, the party took 8,078 votes, 4.0 percent, up 0.2 points, and one seat, recorded as an adjustment seat, with constituency turnout at 82.5 percent. On 30 September 2002 the roll of the new Riksdag listed Holm as Miljöpartiet’s ordinary member for that constituency, and the member register dates the mandate from that day.

On the night of 1–2 October a board telephone conference ended around midnight, with ten votes for an agreement with the government, five against and five abstentions. Eriksson called it the best deal the party had been offered: 15 of 38 manifesto points, but not ministerial posts or a coalition with the Social Democrats and the Left Party. It was to run for two years in the first instance, with eight Green political advisers in four ministries, and then be reviewed.

Member of the Riksdag

Elections and constituency

Ulf Holm was an ordinary member of the Riksdag for the Green Party (Miljöpartiet de gröna) from 30 September 2002 to 29 September 2014, representing the constituency of Skåne läns södra in Skåne County. The Riksdag record splits that service into three terms: 30 September 2002–2 October 2006, 2 October 2006–4 October 2010, and 4 October 2010–29 September 2014. The ordinary mandate ended on 29 September 2014. He was not an ordinary member after that date.

In the 2002 general election the Greens won 8,078 votes in Skåne läns södra, 4.08 percent, and one seat. On the Swedish Election Authority’s 2002 table that seat is entered as 1(1): one mandate, of which one was an adjustment seat (utjämningsmandat). With the other parties’ seats the constituency returned 14 members; turnout was 82.56 percent. Nationally the party received 246,392 votes, 4.65 percent, and 17 of 349 seats.

At the election of 17 September 2006 the Greens again took one seat in Skåne läns södra, on 10,081 votes (4.77 percent). The constituency then returned 13 members, and turnout was 84.55 percent. Statistics Sweden’s report on the 2006 elections lists Holm under Skåne läns södra for the Greens, with 306 personal votes in the constituency — 3.0 percent of the party’s votes there — and five further personal votes in other constituencies. The stated basis of his election is the list comparative figure (jämförelsetal), not personal votes. Nationally the Greens rose to 291,121 votes, 5.24 percent and 19 seats.

In the 2010 general election the constituency again returned 13 members. The Greens won 16,176 votes there, 7.08 percent, and one seat, with turnout at 86.36 percent. In that election the constituency comprised the municipalities of Burlöv, Kävlinge, Lomma, Lund, Sjöbo, Skurup, Staffanstorp, Svedala, Trelleborg, Vellinge and Ystad. Holm remained the ordinary Green member for Skåne läns södra through the term that followed. Across Sweden the party received 437,435 votes, 7.34 percent, and 25 seats.

Committees

For the first two terms his main committee was the Labour Market Committee (arbetsmarknadsutskottet). He was a full member from 8 October 2002 to 2 October 2006 and from 10 October 2006 to 4 October 2010, then a substitute from 12 October 2010 to 11 March 2012 and again from 21 May 2012 to 29 September 2014.

He was a member of the Committee on European Union Affairs (EU-nämnden) from 8 October 2002 to 12 October 2010 and from 16 June 2011 to 29 September 2014, with a substitute period from 17 November 2010 to 15 June 2011 between those spells. Unlike the standing committees, EU-nämnden does not prepare proposals for a decision by the chamber. It is the body with which the government consults on the line Sweden is to take in the European Union.

He was also a substitute on the Justice Committee (8 October 2002–2 October 2006), the Law Committee (lagutskottet, 15 October 2002–2 October 2006), the Committee on the Constitution (3 October 2003–13 April 2004), the Finance Committee (27 October 2005–2 October 2006), the Committee on Civil Affairs (10 October 2006–4 October 2010) and the Committee on Foreign Affairs (24 October 2006–4 October 2010). From 7 October to 20 November 2003 he was a substitute on the joint committee of the constitutional and foreign-affairs committees, and from 1 January 2011 to 29 September 2014 a member of the Parliamentary Council for the Swedish National Audit Office (Riksrevisionens parlamentariska råd).

The labour-market file is large; a few items show its range. On 23 October 2002 he alone moved, in 2002/03:A308, that the activity guarantee — introduced on 1 August 2000 for jobseekers who were, or risked becoming, long-term unemployed — should end at once and in any event during 2003. As first signatory of the Green committee motion 2006/07:A19, submitted on 30 November 2006, he rejected the government’s proposed changes to unemployment insurance, arguing that they would hit people who were involuntarily unemployed, especially women in part-time work and students, and could shift costs onto municipal social assistance while labour-market programme places were cut. On 30 January 2007 he submitted interpellation 2006/07:273, on unemployment benefits for seasonal workers, to the Minister for Employment, Sven Otto Littorin. With Gunvor G. Ericson he moved in 2007/08:A233 that the inquiry into compulsory unemployment insurance should be appointed on a parliamentary basis, with the labour-market parties as a reference council, rather than left as the one-person inquiry assigned to Sören Öman.

Group leadership

The Green parliamentary group then had two group leaders, described in reporting as a male and a female group leader. On 22 September 2008 the group elected Holm, the member from Lund, as its male group leader. Sydsvenskan, reporting the next day, wrote that Mikaela Valtersson had been the female group leader since the 2006 election. The Riksdag records Holm’s assignment as group leader from 1 October 2008 to 4 October 2010.

He held the post while the Green group had 19 members, the party’s seat total from the 2006 election. The 2010 election raised the party to 25 seats, but the recorded group-leader assignment ended on 4 October 2010, as the new term opened. He continued as the ordinary member for Skåne läns södra until 29 September 2014.

Second deputy speaker

The 2010 election

The Riksdag elected on 19 September 2010 met on Monday 4 October. Per Westerberg of the Moderate Party, the outgoing Speaker of the Riksdag, opened the sitting as age president.

Of 349 seats, the Election Authority gave 112 to the Swedish Social Democratic Party, 107 to the Moderates, 25 to the Green Party, 24 to the Liberals (then the Liberal People's Party), 23 to the Centre Party, 20 to the Sweden Democrats, and 19 each to the Christian Democrats and the Left Party. The Election Review Board's list in the protocol matched those figures, so the four-party Alliance had 173 seats and the Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party 156.

Anna Kinberg Batra, for the Alliance, proposed that Westerberg continue, as the candidate of the largest party in the largest grouping. Sven-Erik Österberg, for the Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party, nominated Kent Härstedt on the view that the largest party should name the Speaker. A secret ballot gave Westerberg 194 votes and Härstedt 153. TT, in Smålandsposten, named the serving age president who announced the count as Mona Sahlin. It also reported that Björn Söder later said the Sweden Democrats had voted for Westerberg. Erik Bengtzboe (Moderate) was named to exercise Westerberg's seat for the speakership, and Susanne Eberstein (Social Democrat) was elected first deputy speaker by acclamation on Österberg's nomination.

For second deputy speaker, Mikaela Valtersson nominated Ulf Holm for the Greens as the third-largest party, citing his Riksdag and European Parliament experience. Söder nominated Mikael Jansson and asked for a vote. He said the largest bloc had received the speakership and the next bloc the first deputy speakership, so the Sweden Democrats, as what he called the third bloc, the "Sverigeblocket", should for fairness receive the second deputy speakership, and he pointed to Jansson's years as party leader and as group leader in Gothenburg. The secret ballot gave Holm 325 votes, Jansson 20 and two blank papers, and the chamber elected Holm.

Johan Pehrson, for the Alliance parties, proposed Liselott Hagberg of the Liberal People's Party, third deputy speaker since 2 October 2006, for another term; she was elected by acclamation. Holm succeeded Birgitta Sellén of the Centre Party, second deputy speaker from 2 October 2006 until that day. No statute gives the posts to particular parties. The Riksdag states that until 2018 the deputy speakerships were in practice shared by party size, with none going to the Speaker's party. With the Moderates as Speaker, the 2010 order was therefore the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberal People's Party.

Role in the presidium

The Instrument of Government provides that, for each electoral period, the Riksdag elects a Speaker and a first, a second and a third deputy speaker. They form the presidium and meet regularly on how the Riksdag's work is led. A deputy speaker may preside in the Speaker's place and represent the Riksdag; while presiding, a deputy may not debate but, unlike the Speaker, may vote, and otherwise sits as an ordinary member. A substitute takes the seat only when a member is Speaker or is in the government. Holm is recorded both as a serving member for the southern constituency of Skåne County and as second deputy speaker from 4 October 2010 to 29 September 2014.

The 2010–2014 term

He served the whole period with Westerberg and with first deputy speaker Susanne Eberstein. Hagberg remained third deputy speaker until 30 September 2012; Jan Ertsborn, of the same party, held the post from 1 October 2012 to 29 September 2014.

On the Committee on European Union Affairs Holm was a member until 12 October 2010, a substitute from 17 November 2010 to 15 June 2011, and a member again from 16 June 2011 to 29 September 2014, and he was a Labour Market Committee substitute from 12 October 2010 to 11 March 2012 and from 21 May 2012 to 29 September 2014. From 1 January 2011 he sat on the Parliamentary Council of the Swedish National Audit Office (Riksrevisionens parlamentariska råd). The Office describes the Riksdag council that succeeded that body as following the audit work and being briefed by the Auditor General.

Holm's term ended when the new Riksdag met on 29 September 2014. Urban Ahlin (Social Democrat) and Tobias Billström (Moderate) were elected Speaker and first deputy speaker by acclamation. The Sweden Democrats nominated Björn Söder for second deputy speaker, Mattias Karlsson citing both third-party size and a third bloc, and Hans Linde of the Left Party demanded a secret ballot so members could vote blank. Söder got 53 votes to 292 blank, then 51 to 294; a third ballot, required because he lacked a majority, gave 52 to 292 blank, and he was declared elected. Esabelle Dingizian of the Greens became third deputy speaker by acclamation, and Söder held the second deputy speakership until 24 September 2018.

State secretary

Appointment and ministers served

A Swedish state secretary (statssekreterare) is a politically employed chief official in the Government Offices, not a minister. The office leads the work immediately under the head of a ministry, or under another minister there, and is responsible for planning and coordination. Under the instruction for the Government Offices, that planning duty runs inside the ministry and towards other public bodies; if there are several state secretaries, one coordinates and has a particular responsibility for organisation and administration.

On 7 October 2014 TT reported that Ulf Holm of the Green Party, who had left the Riksdag’s second deputy speakership the week before, was to become state secretary to deputy finance minister Per Bolund, also of the Green Party, at the Ministry of Finance. The same dispatch described a wider round at the ministry: Charlotte Svensson, a state secretary under an earlier Social Democratic government, was joining finance minister Magdalena Andersson, who had also engaged Max Elger and Karolina Ekholm, then leaving the Riksbank. The Riksbank’s general council confirmed the same day that Ekholm had been appointed Andersson’s state secretary. Altinget gave Bolund’s title as minister for financial markets and consumer affairs, and noted the three backgrounds: the deputy speakership, the Riksbank deputy governorship, and the headship of Stockholm’s labour-market administration.

On 22 January 2019 the government announced that former state secretaries had been dismissed and that it had appointed 31 state secretaries that day, most of whom had already held corresponding posts. Holm and Elin Olsson were appointed to Bolund, now minister for financial markets and housing and deputy minister for finance, in the government of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. Altinget noted on 30 January that Holm had been a state secretary since 2014.

On 5 February 2021 Löfven presented a reshuffle: Åsa Lindhagen became minister for financial markets and deputy minister for finance, and Bolund minister for the environment and climate. Altinget reported on 10 February that he stayed at the Ministry of Finance with Lindhagen as his minister, while Olsson took the housing questions with her to equality and housing minister Märta Stenevi. The state-secretary appointment therefore ran under Bolund from October 2014 to February 2021, and under Lindhagen from then until the Green Party left government.

Portfolio

The office has no portfolio of its own; Holm’s work tracked the Green ministers he served at the Ministry of Finance. In October 2014 Altinget described that brief as financial markets and consumer affairs, held together with the deputy finance ministership. At the January 2019 reappointment the government called Bolund minister for financial markets and housing and deputy minister for finance, and consumer affairs was no longer in the title. From February 2021 the division between the two Green state secretaries is the staffing itself: Olsson moved with housing, and Holm remained with the minister for financial markets. Nothing in the government notices of the appointment assigns him a general responsibility for companies under state ownership.

Later scrutiny of the tenure was narrower. On 30 March 2026 the Committee on the Constitution held an open hearing with Holm as a former state secretary, in its annual review of ministers’ official actions and the handling of government business, based on complaints from Riksdag members. Its notice placed the hearing under cases on the then government’s conduct when state AP funds and companies invested in Northvolt, and on the former financial-markets minister’s handling of the AP funds.

End of the appointment

The appointment ended when the coalition broke up. On 24 November 2021, hours after the Riksdag had tolerated Andersson as prime minister, it adopted an opposition budget. Green spokespeople Märta Stenevi and Per Bolund said the party would not serve in a government required to carry out a budget negotiated with the Sweden Democrats, and left the coalition. Andersson asked to be relieved of the premiership, which SVT described as the usual consequence when a governing party withdraws. On 29 November the Riksdag again tolerated her, this time for a Social Democratic single-party government, which SVT called the first such government in 15 years. She gave the statement of government on 30 November 2021 for the government taking office that day.

Altinget wrote on 29 November that the Green state secretaries were leaving with a reduced severance payment, and named Holm as the longest-serving of them. State secretaries are normally entitled to two years’ severance, the paper reported, but the amount depends on how long it has been since a government was last formed. A list of the new government’s state secretaries published on 1 December named Fredrik Olovsson, Elin Eliasson and Tora Hansjons under finance minister Mikael Damberg, and did not include Holm. The tenure announced on 7 October 2014 therefore ended at the change of government on 30 November 2021, and did not continue into the Andersson cabinet.

Regional leadership and later Riksdag service

Chair of the Green Party in Skåne

On 10 March 2024 the annual meeting of Miljöpartiet de gröna in Skåne, held in Höganäs, elected Ulf Holm of Lund as district chair. The party's account the next day recorded a new election and the board: Holm; Sofia Kamlund of Helsingborg, re-elected deputy chair; Ralf Nymberg (Helsingborg); Helena Winter (Kristianstad); Anna-Jessica Persson (Malmö); Lena Östholm Munkberg (Helsingborg); Per-Olov Carlsson (Malmö); Lis-Beth Wiberg (Perstorp); and Filippa Rolf (Vellinge).

On 27 March 2024 Studieförbundet Vuxenskolan in Skåne presented him as the new chair; he named climate policy and rail as the district's focus.

The national congress met in Västerås on 17–19 October 2025. Altinget reported that 260 delegates elected 17 board members, six of them new, and listed Holm, then 56 and from Lund, as a new election and a return to the board; the party spokespersons also sit on it. He was then in the Riksdag as Emma Berginger's substitute.

On 6 December 2025, delegates of the local branches and side organisations fixed the lists for the 2026 Riksdag election. In Skåne läns södra the nomination committee had proposed Holm first, but Hanna Lindqvist, a spokesperson for the party's youth wing, was placed ahead of him. The district published Holm in second place. On his party page he also states that he stood on the lists for Skåne läns västra and Skåne läns norra och östra, and lower down on the regional-council list for the middle sub-district, which includes Lund, and on the Lund municipal list.

At the election on 13 September 2026 the Green Party took 19,638 votes in Skåne läns södra, 7.24 percent, against 5.55 percent in 2022, and kept one seat. The Election Authority's final count names Lindqvist as the member, with 1,644 personal votes on that constituency list, and Holm, with 304, as the first substitute. He was not returned as an ordinary member.

Substitute member of the Riksdag

Under the Riksdag's rules, a member on leave for more than one month is replaced by a substitute called in the order fixed at the election. The member may return at any time, ending the substitute's assignment at once, but may not reclaim the seat for a single sitting.

In December 2022 Altinget reported that Holm would replace Berginger, the Green member for Skåne läns södra, from 12 January to 31 March 2023 while she was on leave; it did not call the leave parental. On 16 December the chamber elected him a substitute on the foreign-affairs, defence and transport committees for that span. The register instead shows two spells as ersättare, 12 January–25 February and 4 March–7 April 2023. She resumed on 26 February, which ended the first spell; the agenda of 24 February then named a second spell through 7 April, and on 11 April the Speaker announced that her return on 8 April had ended his assignment.

In both spells the register lists him as an extra substitute on those three committees. He was a full member of the Swedish delegation to the Nordic Council from 3 to 25 February 2023 and from 4 March to 7 April 2023. From 13 January 2023 he was a substitute on the General Council of the Riksbank; in October 2026 the register still showed that post, with no end date.

On 26 August 2025 Altinget reported that Berginger would be on parental leave from 29 September 2025 through 10 May 2026 and that Holm would cover her work on the Defence Committee. On 23 September the chamber set his service as her substitute from 10 October 2025 to 10 May 2026, elected him to the same three committees for that period, and elected him to the War Delegation from 10 October. The register keeps those committee posts as extra substitutes until 10 May 2026, ends the War Delegation membership on 25 November 2025, and lists him as a deputed member of the joint foreign-affairs and defence committee from 10 October to 10 December 2025. He was a substitute on the Riksdag delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly from 18 November 2025 to 10 May 2026, and a substitute on the Swedish delegation to the Nordic Council from 12 December 2025 to 10 May 2026. After her return the serving spells ended. Following the 2026 election the register listed him as an available substitute (tillgänglig ersättare) for Skåne läns södra, the first substitute for that Green seat, not as an ordinary member.

Political positions

Climate, energy and transport

The case for renewables over large fossil and nuclear projects, which Holm made as Green Party rapporteur on the 1997 European Parliament report on Europe–Asia energy cooperation, recurs in his later Riksdag positions. In 2010, with Maria Ferm, he sought high-speed rail between Malmö, Lund and Stockholm so that trips of about two hours could replace domestic flights.

In SVT’s 2022 election compass he wrote that electricity prices in Skåne County had to fall. New nuclear power, he wrote, takes 10 to 20 years, costs too much and has no solution for spent fuel; offshore wind and rooftop solar were much cheaper if the grids were expanded. Municipalities were, he added, blocking too much wind power at sea and on land.

On 9 August 2026 he replied in Sydsvenskan to the Moderate Emma Ahlström Köster, as Green chair in Skåne. Environmental harm should carry its cost, he wrote, citing Denmark’s aviation tax from 1 January 2025 and calling a Swedish tax reasonable. Aviation subsidies, he argued, crowd out punctual trains and buses, cheaper public transport and electric cars. Rail money favoured Stockholm: double track at Helsingborg had been deferred, and the Lund–Hässleholm upgrade, stopped in 2022, was still unfunded. Traffic from the Fehmarn Belt fixed link should go by rail, not lorry.

Labour market, consumers and financial markets

In October 2002 Holm alone asked that the activity guarantee end during 2003. He wrote that the Greens had first accepted it, and he cited IFAU and an AMS finding that participants were 25 percent more likely to be unemployed again within a year. In October 2006 he asked for sex differences in labour-market measures to be measured and acted on, citing 2004 figures in which men were 76 percent of publicly sheltered workers and 61 percent of wage-subsidy cases, and women 77 percent of the part-time unemployed.

As state secretary at the Ministry of Finance the record ties him to financial markets, not to a consumer bill in his name. On 11 November 2014 the Financial Stability Council listed him beside chair Per Bolund when members, not Holm by name, noted rising household debt and welcomed compulsory amortisation of new mortgages. In March 2016 Dagens industri quoted him, state secretary to the financial-markets minister, calling it “a bit unfortunate” that the Fourth AP Fund had lost its chief executive, deputy and chair after the Rikshem affair. In 2022 he wrote that financial markets must become greener and not fund climate-damaging investment.

Foreign, security and defence policy

On 22 March 2023 Holm and Bassem Nasr wrote in Sydsvenskan that the Greens would vote against NATO. Russia’s attack on Ukraine was very serious, they said, but non-alignment still served Sweden better than the line of the government, the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats, and Ukraine could be helped outside the alliance. They wanted a legal ban on nuclear weapons on Swedish land and in Swedish waters, no first use, and a democracy requirement for members.

Co-signed 2025/26 motions treated membership as given. Motion 2025/26:3963, Jacob Risberg with Holm and Janine Alm Ericson, combined a credible allied role and long-term support for Ukraine with an independent policy of diplomacy and law: no permanent NATO troops or bases, no first use, and no nuclear weapons in Sweden in peace or war. Motions 2025/26:4115 and 2025/26:4096, the same three, sought a ban on war-materiel exports, including follow-on deliveries, to dictatorships, belligerents and states with serious human-rights abuses, while still allowing aid to a country under attack such as Ukraine. Motion 4115 put 2025 exports above 28 billion kronor to 61 countries and cited Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and follow-on deliveries to Israel, and asked for tighter dual-use controls. Motion 4096 rejected most new licensing tests, a secrecy rule and a defence export-control agreement, except removal of the reference to neutrality law.

Motion 2025/26:3986, again those signatories, asked that Nordic cooperation drive the green transition and civil defence, and that Arctic cooperation bar fossil extraction and protect climate, biodiversity, Indigenous rights and peace. Holm led motion 2025/26:3944, with Alm Ericson and Risberg, backing stronger civilian protection but asking the Civil Defence Agency, with disability organisations, to do more under Article 11 of the disability-rights convention, and asking for accessible shelter information. Debating report 2025/26:FöU12 on 29 April 2026, he said shelter places for about 7 million people were not enough, called the accessibility aim too low, and moved the Green reservation.