Sweden’s government is facing mounting pressure over plans to strip non-citizens of residence permits if they fail to meet vague new “honest living” standards.
Rights organisations and legal experts called the measure discriminatory and legally unpredictable.
If parliament approves the reform, the Swedish Migration Agency would from 13 July begin weighing whether applicants have threatened public order and committed minor offences, among others. Those found in breach could be deported.
No definitive list of qualifying violations has been published.
A two-tier rights system
John Stauffer, a legal adviser at Civil Rights Defenders, told AFP that the consequences of those affected would be “very serious.”
His deeper concern is structural: the proposal would create two categories of people with different levels of free expression depending on citizenship status.
“If you are a citizen, you have broad and strongly-protected freedom of expression. If you are not a citizen, then you will have freedom of expression, but it will not be as strong,” Stauffer explained.
Elias Nygren, a lawyer at the Swedish Refugee Law Centre, warned that applicants would have no reliable way of knowing how their past actions might be judged.
“This can also create a sense of insecurity when you don’t really know how your actions in different situations might be assessed,” he told AFP.
Activists caught in net
The uncertainty is already having a chilling effect beyond the migrant community. Frida Bengtsson, head of Greenpeace Sweden, said that people are withdrawing from civil disobedience training over fears that participation could be used against them.
“Many people are dropping out because they hesitate to take action due to the current uncertainty. They don’t really dare take that risk,” Bengtsson added.
Some organisations worry that even lawful protest activity could be deemed a breach of the standard, a concern that the government has not publicly addressed.
Government holds firm
Migration Minister Johan Forssell has brushed off the criticism. “It is not a human right to stay in Sweden,” he said, framing residency as a privilege tied to contribution and effort.
“If you come to Sweden and you’re not a citizen, it’s almost like being a guest in someone’s home. Then you should show that you want to become part of the country. That you make an effort, that you pull your weight, that you work,” Forssell said.
Ludvig Aspling, a spokesman for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats — which props up the minority right-wing government — went further, suggesting that even personal statements could serve as indicators of links to violent extremism, though they should not alone be treated as proof of a lack of “honest living.”
Minister’s own record
The proposal drew satirical fire from Swedish writer Gellert Tamas, who published an op-ed in Dagens Nyheter arguing that Forssell himself could technically meet the bill’s criteria for deportation.
Tamas pointed to Forssell’s son’s former membership in the openly Nazi group Aktivklubb Sverige, describing it, in the bill’s own language, as “clear links to an organisation promoting violence.”
The son’s membership became public in July 2025. Forssell has said that he had not been aware of it.
“Forssell’s defence, that ‘this was about a deeply remorseful 15-year-old, who just turned 16,’ would hardly have impressed in an assessment into honest living,” Tamas wrote.
Bigger push before September vote
The “honest living” measure is one part of a wider immigration crackdown the government is racing to push through before legislative elections in September. Sweden came to power in 2022 on pledges to tighten immigration controls and tackle crime.
Running alongside the conduct-based residency requirement is a separate proposal to dramatically increase the financial incentive for migrants to leave voluntarily.
The current grant stands at €900 per adult. The government wants to raise it to €32,000, an increase of 3,400%.
The existing scheme has had little traction: in 2023, only one out of 70 applications was approved, according to the Swedish Migration Agency.
Sweden first moved towards a stricter asylum stance in 2015, after the country received more than 160,000 asylum seekers — primarily from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria — within a single year.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told Euronews last year that there was an “absolute need to get control on migration.”
Digital enforcement meets legal grey zone
The proposal also sits within a broader European border infrastructure that could make it easier to enforce in practice.
Sweden is one of 29 countries using the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES), which became fully operational on 10 April 2026. The system automatically records biometric data, travel history, and entry and exit dates for non-EU nationals on short stays, creating a detailed digital audit trail.
Behaviors targeted by the “honest living” standard, such as overstaying or working off the books, are already detectable through EES data.
The European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), set to launch in the final quarter of 2026, will add another layer by requiring pre-travel authorisation from visa-exempt nationals, a process that already screens for public order violations and security concerns.
However, neither EES nor ETIAS was designed to make the kind of subjective behavioural judgements that Sweden’s proposal demands. The systems record facts; they do not assess conduct.
Any attempt to use that data to enforce loosely defined standards could run into the EU’s own data protection rules, which tightly govern how information collected under both systems can be shared and applied.
Unequal treatment across borders
The combined effect of Sweden’s domestic policy and the EU’s digital border architecture could place visa-exempt travellers in a legally precarious position.
Someone who obtains ETIAS authorisation in good faith — and who has done nothing wrong under EU-wide standards — could still face residence permit revocation or deportation under criteria applied unilaterally by Sweden.
The Swedish Refugee Law Centre has already said that the new framework will make residence permit decisions unpredictable.
With no definitive list of violations and no clear guidance on how past behaviour will be weighed, that unpredictability looks likely to persist well beyond the 13 July start date.