23rd March 2013
Earth hour will take place tonight at 8.30pm. Hundreds of millions of people will turn off their lights for one hour, on the same night, all across the world in a huge, symbolic show of support. The whole of the UK government, and especially the FCO and its embassies around the world, will also mark […]
22nd March 2013
20 March, as well as being the Spring Equinox, was budget day in the UK. As in other European countries, the UK economy has been affected by the chill of the eurozone’s problem and the long winter of the international financial crisis. Against this backdrop, our government has announced several new measures to stimulate recovery. […]
19th March 2013
It was an honour to attend the beautiful and moving funeral service for Princess Lilian, at Slottskyrkan on Saturday. It was a service with a strong British flavour, with the Palace Choir singing Vaughan Williams’ For All the Saints and a wonderful choral arrangement of Parry’s Jerusalem. The congregation sang Abide with Me (in English) […]
13th March 2013
Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt tweeted on 11 March: “Today people on Falkland Islands will express their view on whether they want the islands to remain part of the UK or not. We will listen.” The answer was clear. On a 92% turnout, 99.8% voted to stay a British Overseas Territory. This was not some […]
8th March 2013
To mark International Women’s Day, we are featuring the stories of women who work for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office across our social networks. Vivien Life is the Ambassador to Denmark – she writes about the impressive number of women in Danish politics, bonding over making coffee and the benefits of understanding the concept of […]
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6th March 2013
What an experience! I have been fortunate to attend many events in my career to date, but the Northern Future Forum (NFF) is probably the most inspiring experience I’ve been a part of. To get up close and personal to so many Prime Ministers in such an informal setting as the Museum of Decorative Arts […]
18th February 2013
In last week’s Riksdag debate on foreign policy, Carl Bildt highlighted the progress that the EU has made through the Eastern Partnership – a Sweden/Poland initiative, of which the UK has been a strong supporter. That support will be seen in action this week when British Foreign Secretary Hague makes a joint visit to Moldova […]
15th February 2013
As Carl Bildt underlined in the Riksdag, the US is Europe’s main international partner, on the security and prosperity agendas. So the UK government welcomes, as Sweden does, President Obama’s call in his State of the Union Speech last night for what he called “a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” with the EU. Britain has […]
4th February 2013
Last week, two notable “green” events came to my attention. First, the UK government launched The Green Deal. This encourages property owners to make energy-saving improvements by allowing them to off-set costs against reductions in their bills. In other words, you can now pay for the the improvements over time on your electricity bill, rather […]
30th January 2013
The British government, like Sweden, is a strong supporter of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Our Prime Minister is honoured to be co-chairing the UN High Level Panel on the future of international development, which will make recommendations later this year on what the new international agenda should be after 2015, when the MDGs are […]