Kristersson noted in his “declaration of government” speech that Sweden is now a member of Nato, that the previously rampant inflation is stabilising at lower levels, and that police are solving more and more gang crimes.
“Month by month, it’s getting harder to be a criminal,” he said, as his government entered the second half of its term, with two years to go until the next election.
“Sweden was long getting poorer and more dangerous. We have started the journey towards becoming richer and safer,” he told the audience of MPs and royal family.
“This is a government that gets things done,” he said.
Kristersson also spoke of his government’s so-called paradigm shift on migration, a key part of the right-wing coalition’s collaboration with the far-right Sweden Democrats.
Some of the proposals include providing incentives for voluntary re-migration, set up reception centres for asylum seekers and make it compulsory for young children in homes where they aren’t learning any Swedish to attend a special language preschool.
He added that asylum migration is at its lowest level.
“When migration decreases, Sweden is given better preconditions to manage integration. How well we as a country succeed in that mission will define what kind of country Sweden is in ten and twenty years,” he said.
As The Local has previously been able to show, highly-qualified migration has fallen in the past year, but Kristersson insisted in his speech that Sweden should be “an attractive country for highly-qualified labour migration, foreign researchers, doctoral students”.
He spoke at length about the government’s attempts to crack down on gang crime, including plans to tighten sentences for youth criminals.
The government expects to earmark 2.3 percent of Sweden’s GDP on military defence, said Kristersson.
Kristersson also brought up one of his Liberal allies’ core issues: decreasing screen time for children.
“We won’t passively accept that children become slaves to the algorithms,” he said, adding that the government will put forward a proposal to completely ban mobile phones in schools and introduce economic subsidies for leisure activities for children.
Kristersson on Tuesday also announced a major reshuffle of his government, promoting Maria Malmer Stenergard to foreign minister and replacing her as migration minister with Johan Forsell, currently minister for foreign trade and international development.
Here’s an English translation of Kristersson’s speech in full.
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