In a press release on Thursday, the government said it had "decided on a bill with propositions aimed at tightening the conditions for labour immigration and combating fraud and workplace crime, while promoting the immigration of highly qualified labour".
The new bill will, as the government said in October, raise the minimum salary for a work permit to 90 percent of the median wage, bar work permits for foreigners in some 'high-risk' sectors, and establish two new crimes: exploiting foreign labour and trading work permits.
It will also bar employers who have been found guilty of or are suspected of certain crimes from employing people on work permits, and will double the fee for employing foreigners who have no right to work in Sweden.
"Labour immigration to Sweden should take place in a fair and orderly manner," Sweden's Migration Minister Johan Forssell said in the press statement. "That is why the government is now implementing a comprehensive reform that puts an end to abuse and strengthens control."
The new laws, he said, would protect qualified workers and benefit serious employers.
“It is essential that labour immigration to Sweden is designed in a way that minimises cheating and workplace crime,” said Ludvig Aspling, migration policy spokesperson for the Sweden Democrats. "With these new, stricter rules, we are putting Sweden's best interests first by counteracting wage dumping and ensuring that unscrupulous actors are not allowed to exploit the system."
The bill is also expected to double the period of time an EU Blue Card is valid from two to four years.
A press spokesperson for Forssell said that it had not yet been finalised when the text of the bill would be published or sent to parliament.
The work permit salary hike was initially included on a list of government bills scheduled for the second half of 2025, slated to go before parliament in November.
But the government did not submit a draft bill to the Council on Legislation, which is responsible for checking the legal wording of government bills, until October 16th, and The Council on Legislation only responded on November 10th.
The council rejected one of the key provisions of the new law, to criminalise the "exploitation of foreign labour" under "obviously unreasonable condition", arguing that the word "exploitation" was too vague.
The existing crime of "human exploitation" in Sweden, the council said, had specified what constituted such exploitation, listing unlawful coercion, deception, or taking advantage of a situation of dependency.
But the new proposal gave no such details about what would constitute the exploitation of foreign labour, making the word "strikingly indeterminate" (påtagligt obestämt) as a basis for criminal liability.
The Council also complained that it was unclear who could be prosecuted under the law, with no text spelling out whether the liability would extend beyond the person setting the wages to include those who recruit or transport the worker while knowing the conditions, or those who simply benefit from the work.
The Council concluded that the proposal failed to meet the necessary requirements for clarity and precision in criminal statutes and said they "cannot support the proposal in its current form".
In the press release the government said it still aimed to bring in a new crime of "exploitation of foreign labour". Forssell's spokesperson said that the wording of the law had been "clarified so that the provision would better meet the requirement for precision requested by the Council on Legislation.”
The Local has contacted the government and the Sweden Democrats asking for details of when the full text of the new law will be published and when it will be submitted to parliament.
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