“The core of the inquiry’s remit is to study how other countries support immigrants’ voluntary emigration, to find methods that can considerably increase this emigration. In its work, the inquiry has concluded that no such methods are to be found,” went the blunt conclusions of the Swedish government’s Inquiry on Support for Immigrants’ Re-emigration, published on Friday.

“The inquiry thus admits to having failed in its core mission.” 

It was a rare setback for the so-called “paradigm shift on immigration” currently being driven through by the right-wing, three-party government, and for observers of Sweden’s admirably thorough legislative process, an example of how even in predictable Sweden, things can still go unexpectedly wrong.  

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But this small upset hardly signals a problem for the project the government signed up to with its Tidö Agreement with the Sweden Democrats. In fact, more than anything, it serves to underline just how smoothly the process – which will see almost the entire immigration policy of the far-right party enacted – has been going. 

“Everything has been carried out according to the timetable that we have. All the inquiries have been launched and if you look at the timetable everything is supposed to be completed by 2025,” Nima Gholam Ali Pour, a Sweden Democrat MP who works on immigration issues alongside the party’s immigration spokesperson Ludvig Aspling, told The Local. “There have not been any complications so far.” 

When the Tidö Agreement was signed in October 2022, more liberal voices among the Moderate Party played down some of the more extreme proposals, telling journalists off the record that the government inquiries appointed would judge them illegal or that they would be watered down out of all recognition by the time they were put to parliament. 

Even people on the left predicted that many measures would be blocked, with John Stauffer, Legal Director at Civil Rights Defenders, telling The Local that he expected legal challenges to be made against several proposals in the agreement. 

Plans to strip citizenship from some criminals, deport people without trial for suspected gang membership or ill-defined “poor behaviour”, strip newly arrived immigrants of many benefits, and detain asylum seekers while their asylum applications are processed would all likely face challenges, he predicted. 

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So far, though, at least as far as I am aware, no proposal in the Tidö Agreement has been challenged in court by civil society organisations.

There has been hefty criticism levelled at some of the proposals, including by The Local’s writers, but there has been unanimity among the government parties and until last week, none of the inquiry chairs have found any insuperable obstacles to the proposal they were appointed to investigate. 

Even with the voluntary returns proposal, Ali Pour told The Local that the government would simply ignore the inquiry’s conclusions and push forward in raising the emigration grants offered in Sweden more than tenfold to the levels seen in Denmark. 

Under Sweden’s system of independent government inquiries, the government appoints a qualified person, very often a judge or senior economist, to carry out a detailed investigation of a planned policy, looking at the pros and cons of different approaches, deciding on the best one and detailing what changes to the law are required to make it happen. 

The resulting reports are advisory, however, and while governments usually do base the proposals they make to parliament on the recommendations, they are not required to do so, and often make at least some changes.  

Sometimes, however, the results of an inquiry and the complications raised by stakeholders at the consultation stage are so unpalatable to the government, that the idea is quietly dropped with no bill ever submitted to parliament. 

Ali Pour said that Aspling and himself were kept well briefed on the progress towards enacting the Tidö Agreement, while the Samordningskansli, or “Coordination Secretariat”, within the government offices worked on the detailed policy proposals.

“We meet either Maria Malmer Stenergard or the state secretary [Anders Hall – state secretary is the title of the most senior political aide in a ministry] every other week, so we have a good idea of what is happening,” he said. “There are a few things that have been delayed, but we understand why, and nothing has been delayed to the extent that it will not be ready before the election in 2026.” 

The main proposal that appeared to be lagging behind time, he said, was a proposal to limit the eligibility of newly arrived immigrants to housing benefits, unemployment benefits and other benefits.

The parliamentary committee appointed was due to submit its conclusions this September, which he said was unlikely to happen. But he said the committee was still near certain to deliver in time for laws to go before parliament before the next election. 

In general, he said, the Sweden Democrats had had no problems negotiating, with the government parties, even with the Liberal Party, which has historically had a relatively liberal view on migration. 

“There’s big respect for the Tidö Agreement, which is the ground for the government, and the government is sticking to it. No one is questioning anything in the agreement,” he said. “The Tidö Agreement is very rich in detail and so far when we have been negotiating on proposals to put before parliament we have been able to compromise and I expect that will continue to be the case.”

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