Sweden’s Transport Administration has told the European Union to vote against rolling out Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software unless the company disables a feature that allows the car to break posted speed limits. Belgium has approved since the beginning of the month.
The Swedish recommendation arrived in a letter dated one month ago, addressed to the EU’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV). They meet on June 30th to discuss whether the Dutch regulator RDW’s national approval of FSD, which kick-started the European rollout, should be extended EU-wide.
Sweden’s message is clear: in its current form, the system gets a no-go on safety grounds.
Speeding by design
The Swedish objection centers on a setting Tesla calls Speed Offset. It allows the vehicle to travel above the legal limit by a margin chosen by the driver. The letter says that “allowing automated systems to systematically exceed legal speed limits risks undermining both the legal framework and the expected safety benefits of vehicle automation.”
A spokesperson officially confirmed that Sweden sticks to its position. Its representative will only vote in favor if the speeding function is removed.
Amid concerns in Finland about automated driving on winter roads and a Norwegian objection to the use of the name ‘Full Self-Driving,’ Swedish regulators flagged the issue early in the testing process.
One investigator said he was surprised to learn the system was allowed to speed at all. The frowning has now transformed into an official, written recommendation aimed at the committee that controls EU market access.
How EU-wide approval works
Tesla secured its first European foothold when the Netherlands approved FSD in April. Since then, any member state is allowed to follow in the footsteps of the temporary green light. Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, and Belgium have followed with national approvals.
But national clearance is not the same as European clearance. For FSD to be recognized Europe-wide, the TCMV needs a qualified majority: member states representing at least 55 percent of the EU countries, and 65 percent of the EU population must say yes.
That threshold makes the position of multiple governments decisive, which is why Sweden is issuing a recommendation letter. It seeks to convince other countries to join the opposition that demands the system to comply with the law regardless of driver override.
Overconfident customers?
Large countries like France, Germany, and Italy, which hold decisive majorities in voting, are taking a more cautious stance. France has already expressed doubts about compliance with the UN ruling on urban deployment.
Smaller countries were convinced that the driver must supervise and remain responsible for driving in all circumstances. But accidents in the US have already shown that the system breeds overconfident customers.
In Belgium, approval relies indirectly on the testing procedure in the Netherlands, where 1.8 million test kilometers were conducted. For Minister of Mobility Annick De Ridder (NV-A), 5,000 kilometers with one car sufficed. At the same time, Belgium’s topography hardly resembles that of the Netherlands.
Central to recovery
The European version of FSD differs from the American one. The US offers driving modes named Sloth, Chill, Hurry, and Mad Max. Europe gets Speed Offset and a Contextual Max Speed setting. The on-screen label reads FSD (Supervised), not Full Self-Driving, presumably to avoid confusion about what the system actually does.
Tesla has framed FSD approval as central to its European recovery. However, a Reuters report leaked that the carmaker had presented misleading safety data to European regulators, including a self-published claim that FSD could have saved 32,000 lives.
Independent researchers said the comparison was invalid. Sweden’s formal objection suggests that at least some regulators are not buying the marketing.
