What is the government planning on doing?
The exact text of the Sweden Democrat-backed government’s agreement, the Tidö Agreement, states that “asylum-related residence permits should be temporary and the institution of permanent residence permits should be phased out to be replaced by a new system based on the immigrant’s protection status”.
It further states that “an inquiry will look into the circumstances under which existing permanent residence permits can be converted, for example through giving affected permit holders realistic possibilities to gain citizenship before a specified deadline. These changes should occur within the framework of basic legal principles.”
What does this mean?
Until recently, it has been unclear whether this applies to all immigrants or just those in Sweden as asylum seekers. However, in a message to SVT prior to their ’30 minuter’ news programme on November 17th, a member of the Migration Minister’s team wrote that “an investigation will look into in what circumstances existing permanent residence permits (permanent residence)could be turned into temporary residence permits”.
This suggests that this could affect all immigrants in Sweden with residence or work permits under Swedish rules rather than EU rules (but not those with residence status or right of residence, which apply to Brits here before Brexit and people here under EU rules, respectively).
This means that, if this were to become law, people with permanent residence permits (PUT or permanent residence), may have to continue to fulfil the requirements of their residence or work permit until they can gain Swedish citizenship – which would take between three and five years under current rules, or eight years under new proposals.
This means that people who currently have permanent residence permits could be forced to pass language or culture tests, fulfil financial requirements or even give up their other citizenship if they come from a country which doesn’t allow dual citizenship if they wish to remain in Sweden permanently.
It also means that people who are unable to get citizenship for whatever reason – for example if they had a black mark on their credit record or cannot afford the maintenance requirement – would be forced to renew their temporary residence permit indefinitely, ensuring they fulfilled the requirements each time they renew.
With current permits lasting for around two years at a time, long waiting times of over two years in some cases, and those waiting for a permit regularly barred from leaving the country and returning, this could effectively trap immigrants in Sweden as they constantly renew their residence permits to stay in the country.
When will these changes come into force?
The short answer to this question is “probably a few years, but we can’t be sure”. The long answer to this question requires a bit of explanation into how the Swedish legislative system works.
First off, a law needs to go through six stages before it can be voted on in parliament. These are the directive, inquiry, final inquiry report, consultation, and draft bill stages, after which bills need to be checked and adapted by the the legal councilor Council on Legislation.
By far, the most time-consuming stage of this process is the inquiry, which can take years, depending on the issue. It’s rarely shorter than a year, and can be much longer (for example, the inquiry in to introducing tests on language and cultural knowledge for citizenship took over a year and a half. It was started in October 2019 and ended in July 2021).
Another stage which can be time-consuming is the consultation stage, which is often around 3 months. But, again, this can be shorter or longer.
The other stages in the legislative process usually take place relatively quickly. But as a general rule, it takes about two years from a law being proposed (as in, formally proposed by parliament issuing a directive), to it being voted on in parliament, so we can expect to see these laws reaching the vote in parliament around the end of 2024, at the earliest.
Some laws take longer. The proposed law on introducing language and cultural knowledge tests for citizenship was proposed three years ago at the time this article was written in November 2022 and has still not been approved by parliament.
The parties in the right-wing bloc behind the Tidö Agreement have said that they aim to get most of their policy through within the current mandate period, meaning that they’re hoping these proposals will become law before the next election in September 2026.
Might the proposal be blocked?
In his interview with state broadcaster SVT, Ribbenvik said that if he had permanent residency in Sweden he would be “extremely worried”, indicating that he feels there is a real chance that holders may end up seeing their residency made temporary.
But the passage in the Tidö Agreement saying that any changes would have to “occur within the framework of basic legal principles” could lead the investigation to conclude that abolishing permanent residency or converting it to temporary residency is not possible.
Kristoffer Jutvik, a researcher at Linköping University who has researched the impact of the 2016 shift to temporary residency for those granted asylum, is sceptical over the legality of the proposed change.
“When I read about the proposal to convert all permanent residence permits to temporary my immediate thought was that it is impossible under the current regulations,” he told The Local. “According to the Swedish Migration Agency, a permanent residence permit can only be withdrawn if it was granted based on deliberately false information or following the conviction of certain crimes. However, I don’t really know what kinds of changes the investigation will propose and I think that no one really does.”
Jutvik said that generally within Sweden’s system, you can’t retroactively withdraw something which has already been granted to people.
“Basically, within public service if you have a positive decision about something, it’s hard to revoke that. It’s just a central tenet of the welfare system and Swedish administrative law (administrative legislation).”
Even if the investigation does judge that such a change is possible under such principles, the government pushes ahead with the proposal and parliament votes it into force, the change might then be challenged at an EU level.