Ulf Kristersson has brought Spain’s migrant regularisation into Sweden’s election campaign, calling the measure introduced by Pedro Sánchez’s government “a very bad idea” and linking it to Sweden’s experience during the 2015 refugee crisis. Although Kristersson made the comments while serving as Sweden’s Prime Minister (statsminister), their timing and framing place them firmly within the political contest ahead of the 13 September general election, where migration remains one of the main dividing lines between the centre-right government and the opposition.
Kristersson attacks Spain’s migrant regularisation
In an interview with the Financial Times, Kristersson, leader of the liberal-conservative Moderate Party (Moderaterna), criticised the extraordinary regularisation launched this year by the Spanish government.
He described the initiative as “a very bad idea” and said it had caused significant concern among other European leaders. According to Kristersson, allowing a large number of people who were previously living in Spain without regular status to obtain residence permits risks creating consequences beyond the Spanish borders because of freedom of movement within the Schengen Area.
The Spanish measure is more precisely an extraordinary regularisation, rather than a general amnesty. It applied to people who had arrived in Spain before 1 January 2026 and could prove that they had remained in the country for at least five months, provided they had no criminal record and did not pose a public security threat.
According to official figures from the Spanish government, 1,174,978 applications were submitted between 16 April and 30 June.
The permits allow successful applicants to live and work legally in Spain. They do not give them a right to settle permanently elsewhere in the European Union, although residence status in a Schengen country allows short-term travel within the passport-free area.
Spain migration becomes part of Sweden’s election campaign
Kristersson’s intervention also has a clear domestic political dimension.
Sweden will elect a new Riksdag on 13 September, and the Prime Minister is campaigning for another term at the head of the centre-right bloc. Migration is one of the issues on which the government parties have sought to draw a clear distinction from the opposition.
The comparison chosen by Kristersson is particularly significant. Following the recent migration crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, he told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that Spain’s Socialist-led government should not repeat what he described as the mistakes made by Sweden’s Social Democratic government in 2015.
That reference is also an indirect attack on Magdalena Andersson and the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna), Kristersson’s main opponents in the election.
More than 160,000 people applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015, when the country was governed by Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. The scale of arrivals subsequently became a major political issue and contributed to a broader tightening of Swedish migration policy across much of the political spectrum.
The Social Democrats have since adopted a considerably more restrictive position on migration. Andersson has repeatedly argued that this policy would remain in place under a change of government, rejecting warnings from the centre-right that a Social Democratic-led government would lead to a return to the policies of the previous decade.
Kristersson, however, has focused his criticism on the other parties that could support such a government, particularly those to the left of the Social Democrats, which favour more permissive migration policies.
Spain is defending a different approach to migration
The Spanish government has defended its policy on different grounds.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez argues that migration is important for an ageing population and for sectors of the Spanish economy that need additional workers. When presenting Spain’s new Integration and Citizenship Plan in June, Sánchez said that legal status should be considered a starting point for integration.
The Spanish government has also said that the regularisation is intended for people who were already living in Spain, rather than as a measure designed to encourage new irregular arrivals.
Official data show that 87% of applicants are of working age, while almost two-thirds come from Central and South America. By the end of June, around 159,000 additional workers linked to the regularisation process had already been registered with Spain’s Social Security system.
This approach differs from the direction taken by several other European governments, including Sweden’s. At EU level, migration policy has increasingly focused on border controls and the return of people without a legal right to remain.
In June, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on new common return rules, including the possibility for member states to establish return hubs in third countries under certain conditions.
The legacy of 2015 remains central to Swedish politics
Kristersson’s criticism therefore brings together two political debates: a broader European disagreement over migration and the continuing importance of 2015 in Swedish politics.
His remarks should also be read in the context of an election campaign rather than solely as a diplomatic dispute between Stockholm and Madrid. By presenting Spain’s policy as a warning, the Moderate leader can reinforce his government’s restrictive migration agenda while simultaneously questioning what could happen under a Social Democratic-led majority.
Spain, meanwhile, is presenting its regularisation as part of an integration and labour-market strategy rather than a retreat from border controls.
The disagreement illustrates the considerable differences that remain between EU governments over how to manage migration, even as common European rules on asylum, borders and returns become more integrated. In Sweden, those differences have now also become material for a domestic election campaign.
