An Italian Victim of Swedish Arrogance about Europe

Riccardo Bevilacqua writes about his problems with Swedes refusing to recognise his Italian passport. From The Local:

Recently I tried to buy a bed at Ikea in Uppsala. There was an offer for payment over 12 months without interest. This time I came prepared: I had with me both an official document stating my personal identification number and my Italian passport.

But the guy at the customer service desk refused to let me apply for the offer.

“You do not have a valid ID”. Referring to my Italian passport, he stated: “This is not a valid passport, since it does not have the personal identification number”.

Of course I tried to explain him that a foreign passport will never include a Swedish personnummer, to which he retorted: “If you do not have it in the passport, it means that you do not have it, thus you are not eligible”.

So I showed him, again, my ID document from the tax office and his answer was: “Well, if you have a personnummer, just go and get a Swedish passport”.

At this point I asked to speak to a supervisor. The guy phoned his supervisor and told him he had a problem with a customer (me) who had a passport “that he claims to be from Italy”.

Finally I was able to talk to the supervisor. But he had some bad news for me.

“I am sorry, we cannot offer you the 12 month rate since you are not an EU citizen”. Try as I might I could not convince him that Italy actually is a member of the Eu.

Riccardo Bevilacqua’s problems with Swedish ignorance are not uncommon. Most European citizens I know have faced the same ordeal when they first settled in Sweden. I blame the Palme-esque nationalism and xenophobia. For decades, Swedes were taught that the “Swedish Model” is superior and that Sweden has nothing to learn from continentals. When the Social Democrats changed their mind about EU membership in the mid-1990s, they knew they had to use more xenophobia to convince their arrogant supporters. So, to many leftist Swedes, joining the EU was all about selling our superior model to the rest of Europe.

The Swedes who refuse to accept Bevilacqua’s Italian passport are acting on this very Swedish idea of a one-way approach to the EU. I bet the same people would be very upset had the Italians not recognised their Swedish passport. It’s a matter of superiority.