Sweden participates actively in the United Nations, including as a member of the Security Council in 1997-98, and other multilateral organizations. The strong interest of the Swedish Government and people in international cooperation and peacemaking has been supplemented in the early 1980s by renewed attention to Nordic and European security questions. In January 1995, Sweden became a full member of the European Union after a referendum in late 1994 indicated that 52.3% of participants wanted to join. Sweden became a member in part due to its increasing isolation outside the economic framework of the Maastricht Treaty. It sits as an observer in the Western European Union and is an active member of NATOís Partnership for Peace and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council.

Swedish foreign policy has been the result of a wide consensus. Sweden cooperates closely with its Nordic neighbors, formally in economic and social matters through the Nordic Council of Ministers and informally in political matters through direct consultation.

Swedish governments have not defined nonalignment as precluding outspoken positions in international affairs. Government leaders have favored national liberation movements that enjoy broad support among developing world countries, with notable attention to Africa. During the Cold War, Sweden was suspicious of the superpowers, which it saw as making decisions affecting small countries without always consulting those countries. With the end of the Cold War, that suspicion has lessened somewhat, although Sweden still chooses to remain nonaligned. Sweden has devoted particular attention to issues of disarmament, arms control, and nuclear nonproliferation and has contributed importantly to UN and other international peacekeeping efforts, including the NATO-led peacekeeping forces in the Balkans. Sweden also contributes to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and will assume leadership of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mazar e-Sharif in 2006.