Focus on Sweden European Sovereignty Ipsos survey on behalf of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Some 8,000 people were interviewed over the internet via Ipsos’ Ac­cess Panel between 28 December 2020 and 8 January 2021, making up eight samples of 1,000 persons repre­sentative of the national population of persons aged 18 and over in France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Ro­mania, Spain and Sweden. The sampling was carried out in accordance with the quota method(sex, age, occupa­tion, rural/urban location, region). This summary pre­sents the results on Sweden. have»no opinion at all«(as against 6 %). The proportion of those with a positive view grows with age(47 % among 18 – 34-year-olds, 53 % among 35 – 49-year-olds, 59 % among 50 – 59-year-olds and up to 65 % among the over­60s), and with income category(54 % among those on low incomes, 58 % among people on average incomes, and 64 % among those on above-average incomes). While Sweden lags some way behind the countries most favourable to the idea of sovereignty(73 % of respondents have a positive view in Germany, 69 % in Poland, 61 % in Latvia and 60 % in Romania), it is well ahead of the more sceptical countries (France, with 29 % positive views, Spain with 28 % and Italy with 21 %). SOVEREIGNTY: A FAIRLY POSITIVE AND CONSENSUAL VIEW IN SWEDEN For centuries, the kingdom of Sweden has been politically structured as a constitutional monarchy. Does Sweden have a specific perception of sovereignty, and by extension, of Eu­ropean sovereignty? The term»sovereignty« was overall viewed slightly more pos­itively in Sweden than in the eight countries in the survey as a whole. The term evokes something»fairly positive« to half of the Swedes interviewed(56 %, as against a European av­erage of 46 %). Some 6 % have a»negative« view(as against a European average of 17 %), while 25 % are»neither posi­tive nor negative«(against an average of 31 %) and 13 % The perceptions associated with the concept of»sovereignty« confirm its rather positive and consensual reception. The no­tion is perceived as»modern« by 23 % of the Swedes, as rather»outdated« by 22 % of them, and as»neither one nor the other« by a relative majority of 39 % of the panel(16 % expressed no opinion). Half of the respondents do not asso­ciate it with a political affiliation(it is perceived as»neither left-wing nor right-wing« by 49 %), even though sovereign­ty is, as elsewhere in Europe, marginally more associated with the right(21 %) than with the left(7 %). When asked to choose two words they associate with the concept of»sovereignty« from a list, Swedes most often choose»self-determination«(62 % in Sweden, as against a European average of 34 %),»independence«(47 % in Swe­den, 42 % on average) and, to a lesser extent,»freedom«