Sweden’s government is set to abolish the requirement that venues must serve food in order to hold an alcohol serving licence – a public health and safety-oriented policy solution that has helped limit intoxication and alcohol harm in nightlife settings.
The reform, due to take effect on 1 June, rests on a factual error: the government’s own justification cites a Finnish precedent that never existed.

“The Government Has Based Its Decision on Wrong Facts”

Accent reports:

“It appears to be a persistent myth that Finland had a food requirement for alcohol serving that was abolished in 2018. This is not true, but because this has been repeated so many times in text, various AI tools on the internet present it as fact. Which it is not.

“Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, Finland stopped requiring food service as a condition for granting serving licences. So in practice, no food requirement has existed in Finland since the beginning of the 1980s,” says Thomas Karlsson, head of unit for preventive work at THL, Finland’s equivalent of the Public Health Agency.

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Other Articles on the Same Topic

  • Food Requirement Abolished Despite Health Criticism (Drugnews)
  • Sharp Criticism of Plans to Remove the Food Requirement (Accent)
  • New Government Announcement: The Food Requirement Will Be Abolished (Accent)

Assessment

The revelation that the Swedish government built its impact assessment for removing the food requirement on a factual error about Finland is remarkable – and deeply concerning. The government’s Simplification Council cited the “limited impact” of Finland’s supposed 2018 removal of its food requirement as key evidence that Sweden could safely follow suit.

But as Thomas Karlsson of THL confirms, Finland has not had a food requirement since the early 1980s. The comparison the government relied on does not exist.

This matters because the government’s own harm estimates – 11 additional deaths and approximately 1,300 additional hospitalisations per year – were calibrated against the non-existent Finnish reform. Björn Trolldal, researcher at CAN (the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs), warns that these figures are likely underestimates: with the correct baseline, the projected impact could be significantly worse.

The food requirement has long served as a protective function in Swedish alcohol policy. It ensures that venues holding serving licences operate as restaurants or food-service establishments rather than premises solely dedicated to alcohol sales. The government investigation “A Safe Upbringing” (SOU 2024:23) found that the food requirement reduces intoxication, limits disorder, and supports safe serving practices. The Public Health Agency of Sweden has recommended retaining the requirement.

Movendi Sweden – the country’s people’s movement for alcohol policy – has been among the many opponents of the proposal. Kristina Sperkova, president of Movendi Sweden, has pointed out that the reform is neither requested nor needed by the Swedish public, and that it only serves the interests of the current government and the alcohol industry rather than the public interest in people’s safety and health.

The government is choosing to pursue a policy that will lead to increased harm and insecurity,” Ms. Sperkova told Drugnews.

Kristina Sperkova, President, Movendi Sweden

The alcohol industry, meanwhile, stands to pocket an estimated SEK 3.9 billion per year from the lowered standards for selling and serving alcohol. It is noteworthy that one of the many stakeholders who supported maintaining the standard is the Hotel and Restaurant Union, representing the people working with selling and serving alcohol. They wanted to food requirement to stay. This juxtaposition shows that the ones benefiting will only be the alcohol industry raking in a windfall that CAN’s Mr. Trolldal warns is likely to translate into lower prices, higher alcohol use, and more harm.

The removal of the food requirement is part of a broader pattern of alcohol policy degradation under the current centre-right Swedish government. The same administration pushed through alcohol “farm sales” legislation in April 2025 that threatens the legal basis of the Systembolaget monopoly, proposed a reduced alcohol tax for small breweries in the 2026 budget, and is now removing a public health-oriented serving licence requirement that has been in place for decades. This comes even as the government’s own inquiry confirmed earlier this year that Sweden’s alcohol policy instruments save lives and that dismantling them would increase harm.