British widow, 78, told to leave Sweden under Brexit rules after living there for 21 years

The Guardian reports the case of Joyce Thomas, a 78-year-old British widow and retired nurse who has lived in Sweden for 21 years and is now fighting deportation. After her husband Gwynne died of cancer in 2023, Thomas downsized with her dog to an apartment in Hammarö, close to her son, her grandchildren and her husband’s grave — then was given just four weeks to leave the country in November, on the grounds that her post-Brexit application to stay had come too late. She is now taking the case to a higher court.

Her case is one of about 2,500 involving Britons ordered to leave Sweden since Brexit, and both campaigners and Britain’s Foreign Office say the Swedish authorities are applying the rules far more strictly than other EU countries. It follows an earlier case, two years ago, in which Sweden threatened to deport a British woman with dementia from her care home shortly before she died.

For older readers who have built lives abroad, the story is a sobering reminder of how much changed with Brexit: decades of quiet, lawful residence can hinge on a single deadline. Thomas herself puts it plainly — no criminal record, self-supporting throughout, uprooted at 78 for what she believes is a paperwork judgment nobody properly looked into.