Educating for active citizenship is a pressing issue in educational policymaking in the European countries, not least in the current neoliberal climate defined by economic and social change and by calls from different quarters for increased pluralism. Growing demands from the European Union on its member states to provide for active citizens through education fuels this task. In this text, Swedish education policy will be taken as a case in order to highlight how this issue is being handled in this ‘local’ national policy setting in Europe. It is argued that the Swedish educational citizen fostering agenda is marked out by a neo liberal orientation as regards the depiction of citizenship, where the envisioned ‘active’ citizen can be described as one with a consuming attitude for self-making. To this end, Sweden appears to respond to supranational demands quite well as regards citizenship education. Nevertheless the 'neo' in Swedish education policy on citizenship is worrying, I argue, as it tends to gloss over important notions of citizenship and citizenship education necessary to consider in our times.