Extensive Cooperation

Working towards ensuring cleaner and safer seas is a demanding task that requires international and national cooperation. The sea is everyone's concern, and the Swedish Coast Guard works very closely with other government agencies, organisations and countries. The Coast Guard is in this regard a flexible, efficient and often requested asset.

National Cooperation

Many of the tasks carried out at sea by the Swedish Coast Guard, is the responsibility of other competent authorities which don’t have the capacity themselves at sea. The Coast Guard works in close cooperation with, among others, the Police, Customs, the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management and the Swedish Transport Agency. On behalf of other government agencies, the Swedish Coast Guard also provides divers to help search for missing persons and lost evidence. The divers also inspect the seabed following accidents at sea. We perform air observations and take aerial photographs that can be used during search and rescue, fighting of wild fires and in a range of other investigations.

International Cooperation

The Swedish Coast Guard also works closely with other countries and international organisations to develop border protection, combat crime and protect the environment. The Swedish Coast Guard cooperates extensively with the Baltic countries in the Helsinki Commission, with the North Sea countries in the Bonn Agreement and with the Nordic countries in the Copenhagen Agreement.

The Swedish Coast Guard is a member of the Arctic Coast Guard Forum. The forum’s aim is to foster safe, secure, and environmentally responsible maritime activity in the Arctic region.

The European Agencies and Coast Guard Functions

The Swedish Coast Guard regularly participates in border control operations within the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex, which is the organisation that promotes operational cooperation at the EU’s external borders. You will find more information on this cooperation under Border Surveillance.

Furthermore, an extensive cooperation is taking place with EFCA, the European Fisheries Control Agency, and EMSA, the European Maritime Security Agency. Together with Frontex, the tasks of the agencies ar called coast guard functions. European cooperation on coast guard functions describes the joint work of European agencies and national authorities at maritime borders.

Coast guard functions comprise tasks related to safety and security at sea, such as search and rescue, border control, fisheries control, customs activities, law enforcement and environmental protection. Frontex, EFCA and EMSA support Member States with information sharing, surveillance and communication services, capacity building activities as well as risk analysis and information exchange on threats in the maritime domain.