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INTERVIEW: Are Sweden’s liberals ready to fight for work permits?

Sweden's liberal work permit system is under assault from the Social Democrats, but Tove Hovemyr from the liberal Fores think tank is worried liberal right-wing parties have lost the appetite to fight back.

INTERVIEW: Are Sweden's liberals ready to fight for work permits?
Tove Hovemyr is public policy expert at the liberal think tank Fores. Photo: David Redebo

For Tove Hovemyr, public policy expert at the liberal think tank Fores, the employer-led immigration law Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Alliance government brought in back in 2008 marks the high watershed of Sweden’s formerly enlightened approach to migration. 

“Sweden became the most liberal labour migration system in all of the OECD countries,” she tells The Local’s Paul O’Mahony in this week’s Sweden in Focus podcast.  “And this has been very successful and great, most of all for Sweden’s growth and labour market situation, but also for our competitiveness in the globalised world that we live in.” 

The 2008 law scrapped Sweden’s old system of arbetsmarknadsprövning, Sweden’s version of the so-called “labour market test”  where the unions and the government would assess which were the roles, professions and industries where Sweden had a shortage of skilled workers.

“It basically says that if someone has offered you a job in Sweden with a wage that is adequate, and that also follows Swedish labour market regulations and so forth, then you were welcome to come from a third country to Sweden and work,” she explains of the 2008 law. “It was not dependent on whether there was a shortage of workers in a sector or industry. And this is still the law that exists in Sweden.” 

However, this liberal law, which has enabled so many people to come and build their lives in Sweden, is now under threat from both left and right. 

Changes to work permit laws which come into force on June 1st already make work permits harder to secure, requiring applicants already to have a signed contract before applying for a work permit, and also to prove that they can support any family they bring. 

But at the end of April, the Social Democrats announced plans to reverse the Reinfeldt reforms and bring back the labour test, while the Moderate Party wants to limit work permits to those on salaries of 27,000 kronor a year. 

“What we can see now is that both the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party now want to restrict Sweden’s liberal labour migration regulations in different ways,” Hovemyr says. 

The Social Democrats’ proposal would return Sweden to the pre-Reinfeldt past, while the Moderates’ proposed threshold, she argues, would mean drastic reductions in labour migration. 

“A lot of the labour migration that we have today, and which we also need, like berry pickers, people at restaurants and hotel workers, would not measure up to this level,” she says of the Moderates’ threshold. 

She sees the push to tighten up labour migration laws as part of the broader anti-migration backlash that began in Sweden in the 1990s but which really took off with the refugee crisis of 2015. 

“The refugee crisis of 2015 shook most policymakers to the core,” Hovemyr says. “Even the most liberal politicians were suddenly in favour of a more restrictive policy, some due to new personal convictions, and some due to the public attitudes towards migration. From a more pragmatic point of view, it is now very hard to be pro-immigration in Sweden.” 

Partly, she concedes, this reflects a toughening of attitudes across the world.

“We’ve seen a fast increase in right-wing populism and nationalism all over the liberal democracies. This is not a development isolated to Sweden, quite the opposite. Sweden is actually not the worst in class.” she argues. “This is a part of a wave of  populism going all over the western countries, and the immigration debate in Sweden is just a part of it.” 

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Hovemyr believes the next battle will be over labour migration. 

“Besides the question of asylum policy, one of the biggest fights we will see, I think, in the years after this election, will be labour migration policy,” she says. “Just as the general attitude in the public policy debate is that it’s hard to be pro-migration, it is also hard to be pro labour migration.” 

Her fear is that there seem to be few politicians ready to fight for the liberal labour migration that she believes has brought Sweden so many benefits. 

“What concerns me is that when these proposals came from the Social Democrats in late April, I didn’t see the defensive reaction from politicians who support liberal labour migration policy that I would have expected,” she says. 

“This is concerning, because I think that many still sees being pro-migration as something dangerous, and it might mean that the fight to keep liberal labour migration laws won’t be as great as I would hope.”

Tove Hovemyr was interviewed by Paul O’Mahony for this week’s Sweden in Focus podcast. 

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WORK PERMITS

EU to ease rules around the ‘single permit’ for non-EU workers

The European Parliament has pushed through changes that will ease the rules around the EU's so-called 'single permit' for third country nationals.

EU to ease rules around the 'single permit' for non-EU workers

What is the EU ‘single permit’?

The EU’s single permit grants third country nationals both a work and residence permit for an EU country with one application.

In 2022, 3.6 million non-EU citizens were issued a single permit to both reside and work in the EU, according to the European statistics agency Eurostat. Almost half of them (48.8 per cent) of the permits were issued for work reasons. France, Spain, Italy and Portugal together issued 63 per cent.

It was designed to simplify access for people moving to the EU for work. It also aims to ensure that permit holders are treated equally to the citizens of the country where they live when it comes to working conditions, education and training, recognition of qualifications and more.

READ ALSO: What is the EU’s ‘single permit’ for third-country nationals and how do I get one?

So what will change exactly?

Workers moving to the European Union on the EU’s ‘single permit’ will no longer be tied to the employer who sponsored them, but they will be able to change jobs under certain conditions, based on new rules adopted by the European Parliament.

The European parliament has now endorsed by a large majority (465 votes in favour, 122 against and 27 abstentions) an update of the directive that regulates the single permit, which was first adopted in 2011.

The changes concern people who move to the EU for the purpose of work.

Under the new text, it will be possible for single permit holders to change employer, occupation and work sector, just with a notification from the new employer to the competent authorities. National authorities will have 45 days to oppose the change.

EU states will also have the option to require a period of up to six months during which the single permit holder has to remain with the first employer. A change during that period would be possible, however, if the employer seriously breaches the work contract, for instance imposing exploitative conditions.

Javier Moreno Sanchez, the Spanish member of the European Parliament who was in charge of the change, said: “The review of the single permit directive will support workers from third countries to reach Europe safely, and European companies to find the workers they need. At the same time we will avoid and prevent labour exploitation, by strengthening the rights of third countries’ workers and protecting them more effectively against abuse.”

Under the new rules, it will be possible to apply for the single permit from a third country or from within the EU, if the applicant already has a valid residence permit. “A person who is legally residing in the EU could request to change their legal status without having to return to their home country,” a note by the parliament explains.

After the application, authorities should issue the single permit within three months, instead of the current four, but the procedure can be extended by 30 days if the file is particularly complex, and the time to deliver the visa is excluded.

Under the changes single permit holders who lose their job will be able to stay in the EU country where they live for three months while the permit is valid (it’s two months under current rules), or six months if they have been in the country for more than two years, to find another job. But each state may decide to offer longer periods.

If a worker has experienced exploitation, member states can also extend by three months the period of unemployment during which the single permit remains valid.

In general, after three months of unemployment, authorities may require evidence that the permit holders have sufficient resources to support themselves without using social assistance.

When will changes take place?

It will still take some time before the new rules are in place. The text of the directive has already been agreed with EU governments but still has to be formally adopted by the EU Council. After that, EU countries will have two years to introduce the changes in their national law.

These rules do not apply in Denmark and Ireland because both have opted out from EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, which include external migration.

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