Ann Linde

Throughout the 1990s, Linde worked in government offices, including the Ministry Secretary of Civil Affairs and the political advisor of the EU and Trade Minister Mats Hellström of Foreign Affairs and of Defense Minister Björn von Sydow on Ministry of Defense.[5]

Linde served as State Secretary for the Ministry of Home Affairs.[6] She worked as Secretary of State with the Interior Minister Anders Ygeman at the Ministry of Justice. Linde was between 2013–2014, the head of the International Department of the European Socialist Party in Brussels, an umbrella organization for all social-democratic parties in the EU. She has previously been an international secretary at the Social Democratic Party in Sweden from 2000 to 2013. During the same period she was on the board of Olof Palmes International Center, the last time as vice-chairman.

Under Linde’s leadership, Sweden’s government decided in March 2020 to send a rapid reaction force of up to 150 troops and helicopters to Mali to join French-led Takuba task force in fighting militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State in the Sahel region of North Africa.[7]

Linde attracted criticism for wearing an islamic headscarf during a visit by a government delegation to Tehran in 2017 when she met president Hassan Rouhani.[8][9]

Being State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, Linde was one of the first politicians in the Government Offices who received information from the Security Department that, due to purchases the Transport Agency made available confidential information for foreign collaborators who were not security-checked. When it came to the media in the summer of 2017, it led to rigid criticism from the conservative opposition and the Swedish Democrats, as well as to new tasks and disclosures, finally a government construction.[10].

Since 1989, Linde has been married to Mats Eriksson.[11] She has two children.[11]