The Social Democrats originally rejected the proposal when the four parties that back the government proposed it on the basis of a reservation they added at the last minute to the conclusions of a cross-party inquiry into revoking citizenships.
At the time, the party complained that the formulation "harming Sweden's vital interests" was too vague and was a new concept in Swedish law, making it too uncertain how broadly the new law could be imposed.
But on Thursday, the Social Democrat MP Amalia Rud Stenlöf said that the Social Democrats had now decided to vote for the proposed law when it comes before parliament later this spring.
"Gang crime is creeping into our system, into the courts, into political parties and other things, and that's whu we need to get legislation in place," she told the public radio broadcaster SR, announcing the policy u-turn on Thursday.
As recently as Tuesday, Rud Stenlöf was still criticising the proposal as "sloppy and legally uncertain", saying it could potentially be applied to accounting and tax crimes, or — pointing to the case of the government's former national security advisor, to "forgetting a classified document at a conference hotel".
As the bill involves a change to the Swedish constitution, it will need to be passed twice, once before and once after the next general election.
Ben McPartland, Editor, The Local Europe
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