The Swedish Customs Service is the customs service

Customs

Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting and safeguarding customs duties and for controlling the flow of goods including animals, transports, personal effects and hazardous items in and out of a country...

 of Sweden. It is a department of the Government of Sweden

Government of Sweden

The Government of the Kingdom of Sweden is the supreme executive authority of Sweden. It consists of the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers appointed by the Prime Minister. The Government is responsible for their actions to the Riksdag, which is the legislative assembly...

.

History

Customs duties have existed in Sweden since the twelfth century, and the current organisation was created in 1636. During this period, the Swedish administration was being developed as Sweden was then a great power

Great power

A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength and diplomatic and cultural influence which may cause small powers to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions...

. The first Collector-General or Head of Customs was .

Customs duties

Duty (economics)

In economics, a duty is a kind of tax, often associated with customs, a payment due to the revenue of a state, levied by force of law. It is a tax on certain items purchased abroad...

, known as "fiscal tolls", were first introduced to raise revenue for the state. Other tolls were introduced later to protect Swedish industry, so-called "protective tariffs

Protectionism

Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...

". In earlier times, most goods were transported by sea

Shipping

Shipping has multiple meanings. It can be a physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo, by land, air, and sea. It also can describe the movement of objects by ship.Land or "ground" shipping can be by train or by truck...

. Vessels arriving in Sweden had to pass through the "Great Sea Toll" where customs duties were paid. There was also a domestic toll, known as the "Little Toll". In the case of the Little Toll, Swedes were forced to pay duty on goods they brought into towns to sell, an important source of income for the Swedish monarchy.

In line with the arrival of duties, so came the rise of smuggling

Smuggling

Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...

. Different goods have been smuggled at different times. From the 18th Century to the mid 19th Century, it was common to smuggle cloth. This was because the government was keen to encourage a textiles industry in Sweden and introduced customs duties and an import ban to prevent foreign cloth coming into the country. In the period between the two world wars, 1920-1939, alcohol

Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

 was the item most smuggled. From the 1960s drug smuggling started to become a problem in Sweden, and remains one today.

Another clear trend is the growing trade with other countries with the aid of new technology, such as the internet. Goods ordered from countries outside the EU through the internet are also subject to duty and other charges.

Upon joining the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

 in 1995, Sweden also joined the EU customs union, which means the customs regulations are standardised throughout the EU. The joint customs union is slightly different to that of the Schengen Area

Schengen Area

The Schengen Area comprises the territories of twenty-five European countries that have implemented the Schengen Agreement signed in the town of Schengen, Luxembourg, in 1985...

 covering free-travel.

Current role

Approximately 75 million travellers, ships, containers and vehicles cross Sweden's frontiers every year. Swedish Customs works in the midst of this flow of goods and people.

The work of Swedish Customs within the law enforcement field extends across the entire chain of a criminal investigation, from intelligence and checks at the customs channel to a completed preliminary investigation. Border protection officers, customs investigators and customs prosecutors work together to combat criminal activity. Customs officers have the right to stop and search individuals, interview, investigate and to search

Search and seizure

Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime.Some countries have...

premises.