Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has sharply criticized Spain’s mass regularization of up to a million illegal migrants, warning that Madrid’s policy risks destabilizing Europe’s borders and repeating the failures of the 2015 migration crisis.
Kristersson, who is seeking re-election next month, called the Spanish amnesty a “very bad idea” in a recent interview with The Financial Times. His comments came after Spain, under the leadership of socialist Prime Minister Sanchez, received nearly 1.2 million applications for legal status under an extraordinary regularization process.
The Swedish leader said the Spanish move caused a “pretty big outcry” at a recent summit of EU leaders. For governments that have spent years trying to tighten migration rules, amid the ongoing chaos that well over a decade of mass migration has caused, Madrid’s decision was seen as a dangerous step in the opposite direction.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government launched the process by royal decree in April. The scheme was initially presented as a way to legalize roughly 500,000 illegal migrants already living and working in Spain.
The final numbers were far higher. According to the Spanish government, 1,174,978 applications were registered by the time the process closed on June 30.
The scale of the response has intensified concern among right-leaning governments and border-control advocates across Europe who say the amnesty rewarded illegal residence, encouraged further arrivals, and placed the Schengen free-movement system under entirely avoidable pressure.
Kristersson warned that one country’s migration decision can quickly become a continental problem. In Europe’s borderless travel zone, a residency policy made in Madrid can have consequences in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Rome, and Berlin.
“It symbolizes that we still have to be very, very careful not to act in a way that could even come close to what happened in 2015,” Kristersson said. “I think Spain got the message … but it shows the vulnerability.”
The Swedish prime minister said he told Sánchez directly that he disapproved of the move. His objection was not only to Spain’s domestic policy, but to the wider message such an amnesty sends to people outside Europe, considering illegal entry.
“Having [the amnesty] also creates a possibility for you to use European territory,” Kristersson said. “That is specifically damaging for us because we know from experience that many people coming to Europe prefer to go north. Exactly that happened in 2015.”
Kristersson added that Sweden could not afford a return to uncontrolled migration. “It is not the time to get relaxed on this,” he said, warning that there is “a huge majority in Sweden” opposed to going back to the chaos of the previous decade.
The reference to 2015 carries deep political weight in Sweden. That year, 1.3 million people, many fleeing wars in Syria and Iraq, sought refuge in Europe, overwhelming reception systems and pushing governments to erect barriers across the continent. Since then, millions more have continuously flooded the continent.
Sweden accepted more migrants relative to its population than almost any other European country during that period. The country later faced major integration problems, parallel social structures, and rising gang violence that reshaped its politics.
Kristersson has governed since 2022 at the head of a center-right coalition made up of the Moderates, Christian Democrats, and Liberals, with support from the national-conservative Sweden Democrats. That arrangement marked a decisive break with Sweden’s old liberal migration consensus.
The government has since moved to tighten asylum, residency, and deportation rules. Asylum applications reportedly fell last year to their lowest level in 40 years.
Earlier this year, Sweden also tightened its immigration and citizenship policies in response to the social consequences of mass migration. Stockholm launched an inquiry into “parallel social structures” that officials say have emerged inside the country.
Education and Integration Minister Simona Mohamsson said those structures include “clans and family-based networks” that undermine the rule of law, threaten democracy, and obstruct integration. She said it was unacceptable that people in Sweden live under social control, honor-based violence, or oppression.
In June, Sweden’s parliament passed legislation phasing out permanent residence permits for people granted protection and certain relatives. The reform was presented as part of a broader effort to reduce asylum-related immigration and strengthen integration.
Swedish authorities have also introduced stricter “good conduct” requirements for residence permits. The new rules allow officials to assess whether applicants are law-abiding, honest, self-supporting, and not a threat to public order.
Such policies represent a long-overdue correction after years of open-border, head-in-the-clouds idealism. Sweden, once held up by globalists as a model of humanitarian migration, has become one of Europe’s clearest warnings about the cost of ignoring borders.
Spain’s amnesty has now become the latest flashpoint. Spain’s socialist government argues that migrants are needed for the economy, employment growth, and the long-term sustainability of an aging population.
But immigration critics say that argument turns illegal migration into a labor-market tool and treats national borders as an inconvenience. They argue that mass regularisation allows governments to legalize a crisis they failed to prevent.
The backlash intensified after a massive surge into Ceuta, Spain’s North African exclave, at the end of July. Tens of thousands of people entered from Morocco by land and sea, with many reportedly swimming around a border breakwater after social media rumors claimed Spain had opened its border.
The surge ended in tragedy. Spanish and Moroccan authorities reported more than 80 deaths on both sides of the border, including people who drowned or were crushed during chaotic attempts to cross barriers.
Spain said tens of thousands of migrants were returned during the first days of the crisis. But the images from Ceuta immediately strengthened the argument that amnesties can act as a pull factor, regardless of how governments describe them.
Italy responded by temporarily suspending its Schengen arrangements with Spain and reinstating air and sea border controls. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her deputies described the move as necessary for security.
France also intensified checks along its border with Spain. Finland, Denmark, and the Czech Republic supported a tougher EU response, with several governments saying Brussels should consider action against Spain within the Schengen system.
On Aug. 4, EU interior ministers called for stronger external borders, faster returns, and expanded efforts to dismantle migrant-smuggling networks. The meeting reflected a growing recognition that Europe’s migration system remains highly vulnerable to unilateral decisions by member states.
The lesson, for conservatives, is straightforward: mass amnesty does not solve illegal migration; it rewards it. Once illegal migrants believe that persistence will eventually bring legal status, every future border crisis becomes harder to control.
Pro-migration NGOs and activist networks have long pushed European governments toward regularization, expanded asylum access, and looser residency rules, producing a vast migration industry that treats illegal entry as a bureaucratic problem to be managed rather than an issue related to sovereignty and security that needs to be stopped.
Kristersson’s warning, therefore, resonates well beyond Sweden and speaks to a broader European revolt against leftist governments that make border decisions in the name of compassion while ordinary citizens are left with the social costs.
The emerging right-wing position is not merely a stricter asylum policy. It includes faster deportations, tougher residence rules, no mass amnesties, no rewards for illegal entry, and, where necessary, remigration for foreign nationals without a right to remain or those who commit serious crimes.
Sweden’s election will now unfold against that continental backdrop. Polling has shown the Social Democrats ahead, while the Sweden Democrats and Moderates remain central to the right-wing bloc’s effort to retain power.
Kristersson has defended cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, saying his side has offered voters a clear governing proposal. He has argued that similar right-leaning coalitions have already operated in countries such as Norway and Finland.
Spain’s amnesty has given his campaign a sharper message. If Sweden relaxes, he warns, the country risks returning to the uncontrolled migration pressures that transformed its politics after 2015.
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