The independent-minded Swedes are softening their opposition to joining the European Community, but the question of political union remains a stumbling block, politicians and analysts said. Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, in an article published Sunday, said neutral Sweden must remain outside the EC's ranks if the trading bloc forms a political union. Carlsson said control over foreign policy was the only major question barring Sweden from EC membership. Even the dissolution of the European power blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, would not persuade Sweden to relinquish its neutrality, he wrote in the Dagens Nyheter daily. Sweden has relaxed many of the restrictions of its tightly controlled economy in the last two years to adapt to European conditions. Major Swedish companies also have merged or signed cooperation deals with European companies to protect themselves when the EC dismantles its internal commercial barriers in 1992. Sweden belongs to the six-nation European Free Trade Association, which is negotiating for commercial links with the 12-nation EC. The package would unite the two into an 18-member European Economic Space accord. But Swedish businessmen and the political opposition complain that the idea would bind the EFTA countries to the EC as a junior partner with no decision-making voice. An opinion poll conducted by the respected SIFO organization showed 51 percent of those asked were in favor of seeking EC membership, compared with 48 percent a year ago. The poll had a three percent margin of error, meaning that the change was insignificant. But the number of respondents who opposed asking for EC membership fell to 21 from 25 percent, perhaps indicating a trend, said SIFO analyst Alf Sjostrom. The rest were undecided. ``We have seen from other polls which we have done that opinion in Sweden is more positive to the EC,'' said Sjostrom. But the polls also showed that most Swedes don't know how EC membership would affect them, he said. Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, speaking in a Stockholm news conference, said Sweden should not consider neutrality an obstacle to seeking EC membership. Denmark, once an EFTA member, is the only Scandinavian country in the EC. ``I see a common foreign policy where there is consensus,'' Ellemann-Jensen said. ``We can work to improve the preconditions for reaching consensus.'' He cautioned that Sweden could not influence EC policy unless it were a full member of the trading bloc. ``We do not want non-members to take part in the decision-making process. It is unthinkable to have far-reaching agreemens that undermine the (EC) integrity and process of decisions,'' he said. Swedish opposition leader Carl Bildt, of the Moderate party, also said the policy of neutrality should not be allowed to exclude Sweden from the EC. ``It is impossible to conduct our neutrality policy as if the Cold War still existed,'' Bildt said. ``It is obvious that we would participate in the cooperation among Europe's democracies.''
