Beatrice Ask

Eva Carin Beatrice Ask (born 20 April 1956) is a Swedish politician and a member of the Moderate Party. She served as Governor of Södermanland County from 1 January 2020 to 31 March 2025.

Ask served as a member of the Swedish Riksdag for Stockholm Municipality from 1994 to 2019. She was Minister for Schools from 1991 to 1994 and Minister for Justice from 2006 to 2014.

Biography Ask was born in Sveg, Jämtland County. She earned a high school diploma in Akron, Ohio, United States, in 1974, and finished her upper secondary school in Sweden in 1976. From 1978 to 1979, she studied international economics at Uppsala University but never graduated. most notably for her part in the change in legislation regulating the National Defence Radio Establishment, as well as her proposal to send lavender-colored envelopes to suspected purchasers of sexual acts, with the head of the Swedish Bar Association, Anne Ramberg, calling the latter "an unacceptable view of human beings. It is a return to medieval times". After the news of the Swedish police controlling the citizenships of fare evaders in the Stockholm subway, Ask supported the REVA project and continuing in-country foreigner checks. An open letter to the minister describing the more recent public uproar has received worldwide attention, and was carried in the New York Times, written in opposition of police actions in Stockholm.

In January 2014, she shared a link on Facebook to a satirical website article about marijuana killing 37 people in the US following the legalization in the state of Colorado, and tied it to her anti-drug stand as a youth politician. Her post was ridiculed and criticized after it spread on social media. Her press secretary later told the Aftonbladet newspaper that the minister had all the time been aware that the article was satirical.

At the end of her time in office as minister for justice, she was the fourth longest-serving person to the hold the office out of 41 individuals. She was second deputy leader of the Moderate Party from 2009 to 2015.

Personal life Ask was formerly in a relationship with Moderate Party politician Christer G. Wennerholm, with whom she has one child. She has a second child from another relationship.