“Citizenship carries with it great importance, and it should no longer be granted lightly to people who have committed or are suspected of having committed serious offences,” Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told a press conference.

Currently, Swedish citizenship can be granted at birth or following adoption, through notification or through application.

Citizenship through notification – medborgarskap genom anmälan – is available to children who have lived in Sweden for at least three years (two if stateless), young adults between 18 and 21 who have lived in Sweden since they turned 13 (15 if stateless) and Nordic citizens.

The requirements for citizenship through notification are not as restrictive as citizenship through application (medborgarskap genom ansökan). There is, for example, no requirement to have “lived an orderly life”, although those who have been sentenced to prison or other incarceration within the last five years do not qualify.

The proposed rules would change the requirements for citizenship through notification by introducing a rule barring people suspected or convicted of committing serious crimes, deemed a threat to Swedish security or linked to certain groups or organisations. 

They would, the proposal states, only apply to people over the age of 15, “with certain exceptions”. 

The exact proposal, seen by The Local, states that it would apply to crimes where the harshest possible punishment is four years or more in prison, as well as for repeated criminality which is not considered to be of a minor nature or which did not occur a long time ago, and affected groups and organisations are those “whose activities include systematic, widespread and serious offences against other people”.

These rules would also apply for people wishing to regain a previously held Swedish citizenship.

Under citizenship via application rules, prospective citizens who have been convicted of a crime must wait before they can apply for citizenship, with the exact length of their wait determined by their sentence. For a crime with a four-year prison sentence, for example, an applicant would need to wait nine years after the end of their sentence before being eligible for citizenship by application.

The government’s new proposal would also make it more difficult to relinquish Swedish citizenship once gained in some cases, specifically if there is a reason to believe that the applicant is being coerced to relinquish their citizenship by someone else, or, in the case of a child, if it is deemed to not be in the child’s best interest. Children over the age of 12 would also need to consent to relinquishing their citizenship under the new proposal.

“No one should be forced to relinquish their citizenship against their will, for example due to living in an honour context,” the press statement reads.

The proposal has been put to the Council on Legislation, which is responsible for analysing the legal aspects of a proposed government bill before it goes before parliament. If approved by parliament, the government suggests it should come into force on October 24th, 2024.