Sweden says asylum eligibility hit 40-year low in 2024

STOCKHOLM: The number of migrants granted asylum in Sweden dropped to the lowest level in 40 years in 2024, the government said on Friday, after a decade-long crackdown on immigration.

Following a large influx of asylum seekers in Sweden during the 2015 migrant crisis, successive left- and right-wing governments have tightened asylum rules.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson´s centre-right minority government introduced ever harsher curbs after it came to power in 2022, propped up by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats.

A total of 6,250 asylum-related residence permits were granted in the Scandinavian country last year, said Migration Minister Johan Forssell, citing fresh statistics from the Migration Agency.

That figure does not include Ukrainians, who have been granted temporary protection throughout the European Union.

The number of people who applied for asylum in Sweden in 2024 was 9,645, the lowest since 1996 and down by 42 percent since 2022.

In 2015, at the height of the migrant crisis, Sweden registered some 163,000 asylum seekers, the highest per capita in the EU.

“While the number of asylum seekers is historically low, the number being granted asylum is also low,” Forssell told reporters.