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RESIDENCY PERMITS

The difficulties of moving to Sweden as a non-EU spouse… even if you marry a Swedish princess

Sweden's Princess Madeleine and her British-American husband, Chris O'Neill, are returning to Sweden after living in Florida since 2018. But how can Chris move to Sweden as a non-EU citizen?

The difficulties of moving to Sweden as a non-EU spouse... even if you marry a Swedish princess
Chris O'Neill and Princess Madeleine at Crown Princess Victoria's 40th birthday party in 2017. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

Princess Madeleine and Chris O’Neill are moving back to Sweden with their three children in August. We hope they like it here.

Unfortunately for O’Neill, some things have changed since he left Sweden in 2015. Brits are no longer EU citizens, which means he’ll have to apply for a residence permit like all the other non-EU citizens planning a move to Sweden.

Unlike before, when O’Neill could live in Sweden as a self-sufficient EU citizen with comprehensive health insurance, there’s no such option for non-EU citizens, meaning he’ll have to fulfil the criteria for a non-EU residence permit (uppehållstillstånd), apply from abroad, and potentially wait for his permit to be processed before he can enter Sweden.

With waiting times well over a year for both family reunification permits and work permits, planning a move to Sweden in just a few months might be a bit… optimistic.

What options does Chris O’Neill have?

The most obvious route for O’Neill to take is a residence permit for moving to someone in Sweden, sometimes also referred to as a sambo permit.

O’Neill qualifies for this, as he is married to a Swedish citizen. His wife must also be able to support him and his three children. According to the Migration Agency, this maintenance requirement is fulfilled if the family member in Sweden has enough money to pay for their home, as well as living costs for the family.

The Migration Agency states more specifically that the Swedish family member must earn 9,445 kronor per month to support a couple living together, plus 3,055 kronor per month for each child under the age of six and 3,667 kronor for each child aged between 7 and 10 years old.

The couple’s children are aged 5, 7 and 9, meaning that Madeleine will need earnings of at least 19,834 kronor a month (after tax) on top of housing costs in order to fulfil this requirement. She can also fulfil this requirement by having enough savings to support the entire family for at least two years – so a mere 476,016 kronor, plus whatever their housing costs will be for the two-year period.

Let’s assume that she can cover the family’s living costs – she’s a member of the Swedish royal family, after all. 

Next, Madeleine needs to have a home “of a suitable size and standard” for the family to live in together.

The Swedish Migration Agency states that a family consisting of two adults needs to have an apartment with a minimum of one room and a kitchen or kitchenette, with more rooms necessary if the family has children. Two children can share one room, it states, meaning that O’Neill and Madeleine need a room with at least three rooms, one kitchen and one bathroom for them and their three children.

The family’s seven-room apartment by Nybroplan in Stockholm is definitely “of a suitable size”, and after a six million kronor renovation a few years ago we can assume that the standard is up to scratch.

O’Neill will also have to provide proof of identity with a valid passport. He’s a citizen of the US and the UK, so here he can choose whichever passport he prefers.

Great, so Madeleine and Chris O’Neill easily fulfil the requirements. 

What are the next steps? 

Firstly, as Madeleine is a Swedish citizen planning on moving to Sweden with a family member who does not hold EU citizenship, the couple will need to prove that they are planning on moving to Sweden “within the near future”. They can do this by providing a housing contract or a job offer, or presumably a press statement from the Swedish royal family stating their plans to move over in August.

O’Neill can’t move to Sweden until his application has been processed, but he is allowed to visit Sweden for up to 90 days at a time, and, as a citizen of a visa-free country, he doesn’t need a visa to do so.

He may also need to visit a Swedish embassy abroad in order to undertake an interview before his application can be processed.

With the family planning on enrolling their children in Swedish schools this autumn, it looks like Chris and Madeleine – like many couples consisting of a Swede and a non-EU citizen – will have to live apart, with Chris separated from his children for months at a time.

In that time, he won’t be eligible for a Swedish personal number, Swedish healthcare, or any other benefits such as sick leave or VAB.

He’ll also have trouble getting BankID or opening a Swedish bank account (unless he already has one from last time they lived in Sweden), and may struggle to get a gym membership, phone contract, or even a membership card at the local ICA (do husbands of princesses do their own food shopping?)

As a British citizen applying for a residence permit for the first time to move to someone in Sweden for the first time who he has been living together with outside Sweden for at least two years, O’Neill can expect to wait around 15 months. Now, that figure isn’t a guide – technically, only 75 percent of recently closed cases matching those criteria were concluded within 15 months – so he could have a much longer or much shorter wait before he’s reunited with his family.

You may be thinking ‘but he’s a successful businessman, can’t he just apply as a self-employed person’? Well, yes, if he wants, but then he’ll be waiting even longer – 75 percent of recently closed cases for permits as a self-employed person got an answer within 29 months.

Member comments

  1. A very well written article as well as a good chuckle Becky.
    So sad and all so true.
    What a stressful time this is after Brexit.

  2. Call me cynical, but I can’t imagine he won’t be granted a permit before he’s even applied for one.

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BREXIT

OPINION: Sweden should follow Denmark and reconsider Brexit deportations

Hundreds of Brits who failed to secure post-Brexit residency in Denmark will be given a second chance. Sweden should offer the same kind of amnesty, writes The Local’s editor Emma Löfgren.

OPINION: Sweden should follow Denmark and reconsider Brexit deportations

The Danish government this week announced that British nationals who missed the deadline for post-Brexit residency will be allowed to apply or reapply.

At least 350 British nationals who lived in Denmark at the time of Brexit failed to apply to remain in the country before the deadline of the end of December 2021, and many were subsequently given orders to leave.

But after criticism from rights groups, who accused Danish immigration authorities of not correctly applying the rules of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, the government on Monday announced that the initial deadline will now be extended until the end of 2023.

It is time for Sweden to follow Denmark’s lead.

Sweden has ordered more Brits to leave since Brexit than any other EU state. Eurostat data reveals that about 2,205 UK citizens were ordered to leave EU countries between 2020 and September 2022 – with around half of this number from Sweden alone.

It’s hard to get clarity into the facts behind these figures, with authorities conceding there could be some degree of inaccuracy, including people being counted twice. They also include people turned away on the border, so they could also include Brits who never lived in Sweden nor had the right to stay post-Brexit.

At The Local, our reporters have repeatedly contacted both the Migration Agency and the border police for more information, which each authority directing us to the other.

But other figures such as rejected applications support the claim that Sweden has turned away an unusually high number of Brits compared to other EU states.

What we know for sure is that Swedish migration authorities rejected a total of 2,155 applications for post-Brexit residence status between November 2020 and December 2022. It’s not clear how many of these were denied because they arrived after the deadline, but data suggests these were a few hundred at most.

Several readers of The Local have told us they wrongly believed they already had the right to stay in Sweden and did not need to apply for residence status, due to confusion over similar-sounding terms such as residence permit, residence card and residence status.

Late applications are however not Sweden’s only problem.

Other reasons for a rejected application, according to a Migration Agency spokesperson, include “incomplete applications, applications where the applicant did not fulfil the requirement for residence status, and applications listed as ‘reason unknown’”.

They also include people such as Gregory – who had lived in Sweden for 21 years but was in between jobs at the time of the deadline, which meant he did not qualify for residence status. Or Kathleen Poole, a bedbound grandmother with Alzheimer’s.

When The Local in early February asked Swedish Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard to explain the high figures, she said they came as “complete news” to her.

“We want them here,” she told us.

She said she could not explain the figures and promised to look into them, but after chasing her office for nearly two months, our reporters have yet to receive a reply.

It’s not as if the risk of deportations should have come as a surprise to anyone.

In the run-up to the Brexit deadline for residency, The Local carried a warning by a leading Facebook group for Brits in Sweden that authorities in the country were not doing enough to reach UK citizens to make them aware of the date.

Malmer Stenergard’s party wasn’t in government at the time, but she chaired the Swedish parliament’s social security committee, which processed the government’s bill on post-Brexit residence status for Brits – a bill the group Brits in Sweden had warned put a concerningly large number at risk of losing their right to stay.

Decision-makers in Sweden have less freedom than their Danish counterparts to influence decisions by government agencies such as the Migration Agency, with so-called “minister rule” being frowned upon – an issue that was brought to its head during the Covid pandemic.

But it should be possible to at least do what Denmark has done and allow those who missed the deadline a chance to reapply and be tried on the same terms as everyone else.

In any case, Brits affected by Brexit deportations deserve an answer, not just silence.

Denmark has found a (half) solution. Sweden, we’re waiting.

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