As a rule of thumb, foreigners should have lived in Sweden for five years before they qualify for a series of social insurance benefits, Sweden's finance minister, Elisabeth Svantesson, said at a press conference announcing the new rules.
These would be: some (but not all) parental benefits, child allowance, housing support, sickness benefits in the form of guarantee benefits (for those on low or no incomes, so income-based sickness benefits wouldn't be affected), care allowance for children with special needs, and additional cost allowance (for adults with disabilities who face extra costs due to special equipment).
A proposal to require disabled newcomers to spend five years in Sweden before qualifying for a personal assistant, which was recommended by the inquiry, has been put on hold pending further analysis.
The new rules would come into force at the start of 2027 and are intended to get more foreign residents into work, rather than rely on benefits.
Who’s affected?
In practice, the groups who will be the most affected are non-EU nationals who are in Sweden on a work permit or study permit and their family members, people who have a residency permit due to exceptionally distressing circumstances, and people whose expulsion from Sweden has been halted with an impediment to enforcement order.
Most EU citizens and refugees will not be affected by the proposed new rules, as Swedish law is obliged to follow EU rules and international asylum conventions.
Are there exceptions?
Yes.
If you have a monthly income of at least 0.48 so-called income base amounts (we’ll explain this in the next paragraph) for at least six consecutive months or 0.25 income base amounts for at least 12 out of the last 24 months, you will qualify for the above-mentioned benefits even if you haven’t yet lived in Sweden for five years.
The income base amount is set by the government once a year and is used to calculate for example pensions. In 2026, the income base amount is 83,400 kronor, so 0.48 income base amounts would be a monthly income of 40,032 kronor, and 0.25 income base amounts would be 20,850 kronor.
This is in order to ensure that highly-qualified workers won’t have to wait five years before they are able to receive some of these social benefits, as the inquiry report argues that they will in most cases be able to meet the income requirement.
As for the five years, they don’t have to be consecutive, but they do have to have been within the past 15 years. Exceptions can be made in exceptional circumstances, such as if you’re a native Swede who’s returning home after more than 15 years abroad.
People who fail to qualify under the general rules but who still require benefits will be able to receive them in cases where there are "exceptional grounds" for this to happen, such as "a strong, established and lasting connection to Sweden".
How will families with children be affected?
We have received queries from readers of The Local based on the fact that many Swedish news sites have reported it as a bid to revoke immigrants' right to parental benefits in their first five years of living in Sweden, which would have a huge impact on people’s lives.
However, for most parents it won't stretch quite that far. Let us explain.
Parents in Sweden can receive benefits for 480 days, which are split into 390 days based on your income (or your so-called sickness benefit qualifying income, which is also used to calculate for example your sick pay) and 90 days paid out at the lowest level, 180 kronor per day.
Under current rules, if you don't have an income or are on an income so low you're not entitled to a sickness benefit qualifying income (sjukpenninggrundande inkomst – SGI), you still receive a basic amount of 250 kronor a day (grundbidrag) for those 390 days.
While the inquiry doesn't clarify exactly all details about how the proposed rules would affect foreign parents (and in fact the Social Insurance Agency didn't want to comment when The Local approached them to ask a fact-based question, as they hadn't yet studied the inquiry report) we do know that SGI-based parental benefits are based on employment whereas the lowest-level and basic amount are residency-based.
The inquiry only targets residency-based benefits, not those based on employment.
This means, inquiry head Göran Lundahl confirmed to The Local after we had read the report, that the 390 days that are based on a person's SGI are unaffected by the proposal. In other words, if you have an income and are entitled to SGI, you'll still have the right to those 390 days.
You would however not get those extra 90 days of 180 kronor a day. And foreign parents who are only entitled to parental benefits based on the grundbidrag of 250 kronor a day and the 90 days paid out at the lowest level would still be affected by the proposed changes.
Another aspect of the proposed new rules which would affect a lot of families with children is the scrapping of child allowance (barnbidrag), which is currently paid out to parents with children under the age of 16, for those who haven’t lived at least five years in Sweden (or less, if your income is high enough).
That would mean parents who don’t qualify would effectively lose out on 1,250 kronor a month if they have one child, 2,650 kronor if they have two children, 4,480 kronor if they have three children, with the figure rising even further for families with more children.
The inquiry estimates that around 50,000 children currently live in households in Sweden that wouldn’t be entitled to child allowance during the qualifying period, which, it reports, would lead to 2,000 more children classified as “new arrivals from third countries” living in economically vulnerable families than today.
It notes that integration would improve for children whose parents find work as a result of the reforms, but that based on examples from Denmark, in general the reforms would lead to falling school grades, fewer children in preschool and more children turning to crime.
What did the government change?
The government made four significant changes to the inquiry's recommendations, all of which reduced the impact on newcomers:
- The inquiry proposed transitional rules for those who already live in Sweden, allowing them to count the years they’ve already lived in the country towards their qualifying period. The government decided to instead exempt everyone living in Sweden at the time the new rules come into force on January 1st, 2027.
- The inquiry recommended requiring newcomers to earn 0.35 income base amounts or more over 12 months to qualify for benefits. The government has reduced this to 0.25 income base amounts.
- The inquiry proposed requiring newcomers to qualify even for social assistance, Sweden's means-tested, last-resort payments for those in acute need. The government has decided not to keep issuing this without qualification.
- The inquiry recommended that people applying for benefits citing "exceptional grounds", should have to apply themselves. The government will instead require the relevant government agencies to themselves take the initiative.
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