THE toughest anti-alcohol regime in the European Union is collapsing in the face of Brussels regulations that have forced Sweden to end its draconian limits on imports of booze.

The abolition of those limits at the beginning of this month has sparked a shopping trolley revolution, with thousands of Swedes flocking abroad to stock up on whisky and wine.

This is wrecking the state monopoly on liquor sales, robbing the Government of revenue, and threatening to revive a tradition of binge-drinking that Sweden sought to eliminate when it imposed controls on alcohol in 1917.

Judging by the crowds on the Elsinore ferry — Elsinore being the Danish home not only of Hamlet but also hundreds of cheap drink stores — Swedish society is in for a shock. “We are sick of being punished for drinking wine. It’s just ridiculous,” said Erik Sjoegren, a Swedish engineer who had just loaded up his trolley with crates of chianti on his brief expedition to Denmark.

The economic logic is overpowering: a bottle of cheap red wine in Sweden’s state-controlled shops starts at 60 Swedish crowns or around £4.50. Some 70 per cent of the price is made up of alcohol tax and the shop’s commission. Now, Swedes are allowed to import 10 litres of spirits, 90 litres of wine and 110 litres of beer on every trip abroad.

It is difficult to see how the state network, known as systembolaget, which buys from a few authorised importers, can survive.

This is, in the view of Swedish intellectuals, the beginning of a battle between the rights of the individual (to decide if and when and how quickly to get drunk) and the state. The history of hard drinking and that of Sweden are intimately intertwined. Meddle with the alcohol habit and you change the very structure of society.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sweden was a poor agricultural economy: the tedium of the fields, the long, dark nights and the ease with which potatoes could be converted into alcohol made drunkenness part of the social fabric. The Lutheran Church recognised the problem early and started a temperance movement which still boasts hundreds of thousands of members.

The industrialisation of Sweden brought together employers — irritated that weekend hangovers virtually wrote off Monday as a working day — and unions. The country, it was agreed, was being pickled by excessive drink. The average Swede was drinking 46 litres of spirits a year. “Women and children had a terrible time of it,” a government report said.

“The alcohol consumption of the men exposed them to violence and hunger.”

Rather than launch a complete prohibition, Swedes began rationing in 1917. Men were given a ration book and alcohol intake dropped.

But the move came to be seen as a step towards a Big Brother society and doctors argued that rationing made alcohol seem more glamorous. The system was abolished in 1955 and gradually the systembolaget shops became the primary method of controlling drinking habits.

Today there are 460 state shops across the country and it is impossible to buy strong alcohol elsewhere. Until recently, these shops were forbidding places, resembling the parcels depot of a post office.

For decades, the sales clerk had a red light on his desk; when it flashed at random intervals, he had to check the customer’s identity. Anyone under 20 was, in any case, banned from buying alcohol and the manager was obliged to check the ID of those who looked under the age of 25. The red lights have gone, but the rules still apply.

There is no attempt to make drink attractive. All advertising is forbidden. A wide range of cheap wines are available in the shops, but many of them are in unattractive cardboard cartons. The shops, until recently, were shut on Saturdays, and as a result queues snaked around the block on Friday afternoons as half a million Swedes tried to pick up their weekend supplies.

“The drinking habits of Swedes are fundamentally different from other countries,” says Hakan Leifman, a Stockholm sociologist. “When we drink, we drink a lot.”

The established pattern has not changed since the beginning of the 20th century. Little or nothing is drunk from Monday to Friday, but on Saturday the young, working-class Swede sets out on a 48-hour mission to drink to oblivion. Most violent crimes are committed at weekends. “With the last drink comes the first punch,” runs a Swedish proverb.

Systembolaget is increasingly being seen as a repressive instrument. The gourmet Swede regards it as an insult that he has to queue in the shop and order a good wine for dinner. Delivery of the bottle can take up to a week. The taxation is huge and a deterrent; the state shops have an annual turnover of just under €2 billion (£1.4 billion).

The revolt began in earnest in the mid-1990s. When Sweden joined the EU in 1995, Brussels allowed the state alcohol distribution system to continue. But a doughty shopkeeper, Harry Frenzen, started to sell wine in his village food shop. He was arrested, but argued: “We are individuals and we don’t need the Government to nanny us.”

Mr Frenzen, a bearded, bear-like man who wears a sea captain’s hat, led the appeal to the European Court in Luxembourg and won.

One research commission predicted 600 more alcoholrelated deaths and 3,000 alcohol-fuelled muggings annually if the systembolaget network collapses.

STIFF MEASURES

Sweden, with a population of 8.6 million, has an estimated 300,000 alcoholics

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