A 78-year-old British widow, Joyce Thomas, is facing deportation from Sweden after living there for 22 years, having missed a post-Brexit deadline to formally apply for residence status. Her case highlights a wider problem affecting British nationals in Sweden and elsewhere in the EU, who lost automatic right of residence when the UK left the EU and had to apply separately during a transition period that ended in December 2021. The Swedish migration minister has said the government will look at whether the process can be eased for those affected, though he did not directly address Thomas's individual case.

Thomas, a retired nurse who moved to Sweden with her late husband, says she only learned of the application requirement in 2023 when re-entering the country, and her subsequent appeals have been rejected, with a voluntary departure deadline set for 8 September. Eurostat data shows 2,490 UK nationals were ordered to leave Sweden between 2021 and 2025 — almost a third of the more than 7,500 ordered to leave across the EU — while Swedish authorities told the Guardian that 458 Britons have been deported or forcibly removed since Brexit. A similar case was reported last month involving a man with dementia threatened with removal after over two decades in Sweden, and the UK Foreign Office says it is ready to support Swedish authorities in reviewing the issue.