The new citizenship requirements that the government wants to introduce include "living honorably", knowing Swedish and being able to support yourself. You must also have resided in Sweden for a longer period of time, as a general rule, eight years instead of the current five.
When the law is scheduled to come into force - on National Day, June 6 - it will apply to all cases that have not yet been decided at that time, according to the government.
Thousands of cases
In January, there were almost 100,000 open citizenship cases at the Swedish Migration Board, and in 2025 the processing time was an average of 573 days.
The senior lawyers in the Law Council, who are reviewing the government's bill, say it is "somewhat questionable" why the government has not proposed any transitional rules for those whose applications are already being processed.
The Swedish Migration Board's processing and decision times for citizenship "are already too long," according to the Swedish Legislative Council.
The lawyers point out that this means individuals who applied for citizenship under the old rules may be assessed according to the new, significantly stricter requirements, rather than the rules that applied when they applied.
Advises against introduction
The need for transitional rules concerns the individual's "confidence in the robustness of the legal order," the Law Council writes, and continues:
"And to the applicant's legitimate expectation that the regulation that was the basis for the application or for appealing a decision is not undermined by the regulation being significantly changed to the applicant's detriment during the processing period."
The Legislative Council advises against "introducing the proposed regulation without transitional provisions".
However, the government does not intend to listen to the experts.
"The requirements aim to strengthen the importance of citizenship and the Swedish community. We therefore believe it is obvious that the new requirements should apply to all new citizenships so that everyone who becomes a Swedish citizen after June 6, 2026 can feel proud to have fulfilled the requirements," writes Migration Minister Johan Forssell (M) in a statement.
