Ethnic discrimination in Sweden remains a concern inside parts of the state apparatus, according to a new review by the Swedish National Audit Office, which says several major authorities are still weak at identifying and preventing discriminatory risks in decisions that affect individuals. The report, published on 16 April, says the shortcomings can harm citizens directly and also erode trust in the state.
What the National Audit Office found in Swedish agencies
The review examined seven authorities: the Swedish Public Employment Service, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, the Swedish Enforcement Authority, the Swedish Police Authority, the Swedish Tax Agency and the Swedish Customs Agency.
According to the National Audit Office, the overall picture is that Sweden’s work against ethnic discrimination in administrative decision-making is not effective. The main weakness is not the handling of formal complaints, where agencies are generally prepared to respond, but the lack of systematic preventive work.
That matters because discriminatory risks in public decision-making are often hard for individuals to detect on their own. A person may receive a rejection, a control measure or an intervention without having enough information to know whether they were treated differently from others in a comparable case.
The report points to earlier indications that some minority groups are more likely to face rejected applications for support, compensation or benefits, and may also be subjected more often to checks or interventions on incorrect grounds. In practical terms, this can affect access to welfare, the use of coercive powers and the fairness of everyday contact with the state.
Why prevention of ethnic discrimination is still weak
The audit says many agencies still rely on broad equal-treatment measures, such as training on public-sector values, rather than targeted methods designed to uncover specific risks in actual case handling. In other words, the framework exists, but the follow-up is often too generic.
The National Audit Office also found that agencies rarely evaluate whether their anti-discrimination measures work in practice. That gap is important. Without internal monitoring, authorities may be able to react once a case is reported, but still fail to detect patterns before harm occurs.
This is one of the report’s central warnings: reactive systems are not enough when discrimination can remain invisible to the person affected. In such cases, prevention depends on institutions reviewing their own routines, data, risk factors and decision-making culture.
The limits of the Equality Ombudsman’s role
The report is also critical of the Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen, DO). It says the watchdog’s current tools do not contribute enough to preventing ethnic discrimination in decisions by public authorities.
Part of the problem is legal and institutional. The audit says DO cannot review all complaints in this area under current legislation, and that evidentiary barriers make oversight difficult. But the auditors also say DO has not, in recent years, prioritised enough training, dialogue and other preventive action directed at state authorities.
That criticism does not amount to a rejection of DO’s broader mission. Rather, the report argues that a model focused mainly on individual complaints has limited value in cases where individuals may not realise that discrimination has occurred in the first place.
This reflects a wider structural issue in Sweden’s anti-discrimination system. The Discrimination Act is designed to protect equal rights regardless of ethnicity and other protected grounds, but Swedish official assessments have also noted that not all real-life situations are fully covered by the legal framework, including some interactions involving public bodies.
Trust in the state is part of the wider issue
The findings go beyond administrative procedure. The National Audit Office explicitly warns that weak action against ethnic discrimination in Sweden can undermine confidence in state institutions.
That is politically significant in a country where public trust has long been seen as a core part of the social model. If citizens believe that checks, benefit assessments or enforcement decisions may be shaped by background rather than law, the consequences are not only personal but institutional.
The review also frames discrimination as an efficiency problem. When authorities act on flawed assumptions or fail to target controls correctly, public resources are not used in the way parliament intended. That makes the issue relevant not only for civil-rights debates, but also for governance and state capacity.
What the report recommends to the government and DO
The National Audit Office recommends that the seven authorities more regularly investigate and manage the risk of ethnic discrimination in their own decision-making. It also says the government should monitor how agencies handle those risks and consider giving a suitable authority the task of strengthening expertise on discrimination across the public sector.
For DO, the recommendation is to make greater use of its existing powers even where there is no single complainant, and to direct more preventive work towards public authorities through training and dialogue.
The report does not suggest that all seven agencies perform equally poorly, but its conclusion is clear: the current state response is too incomplete to provide an effective safeguard.
Why this matters in the Swedish and European context
The debate is likely to resonate beyond Sweden. Across Europe, governments are under pressure to show that anti-discrimination commitments apply not only in principle but inside welfare systems, policing, tax enforcement and border controls.
In the Swedish case, the issue is especially sensitive because public institutions play such a large role in citizens’ daily lives. Decisions by employment offices, social insurance bodies, police and tax authorities shape access to rights, income security and freedom from arbitrary scrutiny.
That is why the report may have a wider significance than a standard administrative audit. It suggests that the credibility of the state depends not only on formal legality, but on whether authorities can prove that equal treatment is built into how decisions are prepared, checked and reviewed.
Sweden still presents itself as a country with strong institutional safeguards. The new audit does not overturn that image, but it does show that on ethnic discrimination, formal commitments are not the same as effective prevention.
