Facts: Carl-Oskar Bohlin
Born in Borlänge in 1986.
Elected in 2005 as chairman of the Moderate Youth Association in Dalarna.
Carl-Oskar Bohlin began law studies at Uppsala University but interrupted these when he was elected to the Riksdag in 2010.
Has been a member of the civil committee 2014–18 and 2019–22, the justice committee 2018–19, chairman of the business committee 2019 and 2022 and the Moderates’ spokesperson on business and energy policy issues.
— Every Swede needs to go to himself and identify his ability to handle large-scale crises so that he does not live with the perspective that as soon as a crisis occurs he will automatically receive help from society, says Carl-Oskar Bohlin (M).
How is his own preparedness? Carl-Oskar Bohlin does not want to describe it as an emergency box, but says that his home preparedness is generally good. But he urges everyone to think beyond what gadgets you should have at home.
— I would give as a general piece of advice to everyone in Sweden to reflect on how to handle a situation where we have a loss of electricity supply and loss of mobile communication.
— It can be about such a basic thing as how to get home from work, how to make sure you get to your children at preschool, where to meet if you are on the road and not in contact with each other. I would say that is at least as important a question as having all the right things in your emergency box.
Complex society
We will not see a return to the Cold War’s enormous emergency organization with underground warehouses of everything from coffee to underpants, underlines Carl-Oskar Bohlin.
— One must be aware that society is in many ways today more complex. The economy is more complex, the systems are more complex, supply chains are more complex. We need to work on a very broad front to strengthen preparedness stocks of various forms that may become necessary, review supply chains and review vulnerabilities in them.
It’s no small briefcase he’s got on his desk. He is certainly not completely unfamiliar with the issues, having been chairman of the Riksdag’s business committee and the Moderates’ business and energy policy spokesperson.
— But it becomes very apparent when you take on a portfolio like this how extremely complex civil defense is. It’s really everything in society. To some extent, it is all authorities and all actors in society and their ability to function outside of a normal state.
Political unity
Carl-Oskar Bohlin feels that there is a relatively broad political consensus that the issues need to be prioritized.
— This government’s ambition for these issues is now manifested partly through the fact that these issues are moving back to the Ministry of Defence, which gets a holistic view of total defense issues.
He sees that the work must begin by ensuring that there are structures for how the various actors should function in the event of a crisis or heightened preparedness. The organization that is built up in peacetime must be built to function in times of crisis or war.
— Here we still have a journey to make, but with the defense decision in 2020, a number of steps have already been taken.
– Then it is important to start training in these structures, because it is very difficult to try to invent crisis management or handling war situations once you are in them, but it must be in place before that.