Malmer Stenergard will already be well known to many, perhaps most, readers of The Local, as the figurehead of Sweden’s ‘paradigm shift on Migration’. 

Given the importance to this government of the project, she has been more in the spotlight than almost any other minister and has proved herself skilful at handling what some would have seen a poisoned chalice — enacting a programme of migration reform largely drawn up by the far-right Sweden Democrats.

She has shown herself adept at making measures that once might have seemed extreme come across as reasonable, and has mastered the detail of the legal changes her government is pushing through.

Background in Skåne, southern Sweden 

Like her predecessor, Tobias Billström, Malmer Stenergard is from Skåne, meaning the grand Gustavian rooms of the Arvfurstens palats will once again ring to the characteristic dipthongs of southern Sweden. But while he is from Malmö, she is from Åhus in the east of the county, going to upper secondary school in the nearby city of Kristianstad.  

Her husband, David Stenergard, was chief of staff for the Moderate Party in Region Skåne until last year, when he took a job as business policy expert at the Stockholm Chambers of Commerce. 

Picked out as a future leader early

When she was a law student at Lund University, Malmer Stenergard was already active in Moderate Party politics, becoming vice chair of the Confederation of Swedish Conservative and Liberal Students. 

She was also one of the handful each year accepted into Stureakademin, or “The Sture Academy”, a programme for youth leaders run by Timbro, Sweden’s pro-business lobby organisation which ends with a study trip to Washington DC, where participants visit right-wing think tanks such as the Cato Institute.

Background as a lawyer 

Malmer Stenergard did her first degree in Integration Systems and went to work at Tetra Pak as a systems executive, giving up after a year and returning to Lund to study law. 

On graduating in 2008, she spent six years working as a lawyer, first as a notary at Hässleholm district court and then as a bailiff at the Swedish Enforcement Authority, before being voted into parliament as an MP in 2014. 

She chaired the Social Insurance Committee from 2019 until 2022, giving her a key role in handling legislation rushed through during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

No foreign policy expertise 

Unlike many of the other candidates for the post of foreign minister, Malmer Stenergard has had little foreign policy experience, with her career both pre-politics and in parliament more rooted in social and legal issues.

She told an interviewer from TT that she had needed no time to weigh up whether to take the position being offered. “I accepted immediately,” she said. “Many people seem to forget that the migration issue is global and the the post of Migration Minister involves a lot of work in the international environment.” 

As listeners to The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast will know, Malmer Stenergard speaks excellent English and she told TT she also “at one point spoke more-or-less fluent German”. 

On discussing her priorities, she perhaps used stronger language on the Gaza crisis than Billström had done, calling it a “terrible humanitarian catastrophe” and calling for a ceasefire “as soon as possible” before work begins on a two-state solution. 

She also said that the government would continue to support Ukraine “militarily, politically, and with humanitarian aid, for as long as is needed”.