In an article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, Maria Malmer Stenergard, Sweden’s migration minister, and the Sweden Democrats’ migration spokesperson, Ludvig Aspling, said that the aim was to tighten up Sweden’s asylum rules to the minimum level allowed under EU law. 

“The government is now carrying out a necessary paradigm shift in Swedish migration policy,” they write. “The inquiry’s chair will now analyse Swedish law and propose what changes are necessary to ensure that Swedish asylum commitments do not exceed those that follow from EU law and other international obligations.”  

The two argued that Sweden’s historically light-touch system had made Sweden a magnet for asylum seekers and brought unnecessary costs. 

“A regulatory framework that has been far too generous compared to countries in our immediate region has not only created a strong incentive to travel long distances through the EU, but also made asylum assessments unecessarily slow and expensive,” they wrote. 

Boswell, a Stockholm prosecutor, was one of the six civil servants appointed by the Sweden Democrats in November 2022 to sit on the new samordningskansli, or Coordination Committee, the government set up within Sweden’s Government Offices after it took power last year.  She had not previously been publicly involved with the far-right party. 

The committee was promised under the Tidö Agreement as a way of allowing the Sweden Democrats to track and manage promises made to it by the three governing parties. 

In the directive given to her by the government, Boswell is tasked with examining how the law can be changed to stop asylum seekers getting permanent residency and also how permanent residency can be stripped away from those who have already been awarded it. 

She is also being asked to examine how residency permits can be recalled if the situation in the home countries of those granted asylum changes so that they are no longer at risk. 

She is being asked to look at how clear-cut cases, where the applicant clearly has no grounds for asylum, can be handled in a rapid way, without going through a full assessment process.

She is also being asked to look at how resources such as translators might be restricted. Under EU rules, member states are only required to supply translators in situations where they are necessary for a fair legal process. 

The Tidö Agreement between the three parties in Sweden’s governing coalition and the far-right Sweden Democrats includes a commitment to bringing Sweden’s asylum rules to the “EU legal minimum”. 

Boswell has until January 2025 to submit her conclusions on which laws ned to be changed to reach the EU legal minimum, and until October 2025 to submit her conclusions on other tasks given to her.