Reader question: Do I have to attend a ceremony to get Swedish citizenship?
Swedish municipalities up and down the country host ceremonies for new citizens on National Day, June 6th. Do you have to attend one of these before you can officially call yourself Swedish?
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The Swedish government and its allies, the Sweden Democrats, are currently in the process of tightening up the rules for citizenship and permanent residency, with an inquiry in January this year proposing extending the residency requirement for citizenship from five to eight years, introducing a self-sufficiency requirement and requiring that applicants pass language and civics tests.
The government and the Sweden Democrats also asked the inquiry to look into introducing some sort of mandatory oath of allegiance or other ceremony for prospective Swedish citizens, in part to raise the profile of citizenship and make it mean more to applicants.
The inquiry decided against this, arguing that the voluntary ceremonies that each Swedish municipality holds for citizens each year are sufficient and that organising extra mandatory ceremonies would be too much of an administrative headache.
That might not always be the case. The government has already hinted it may overrule the inquiry on citizenship ceremonies.
But for now at least, ceremonies held by municipalities – which you may have received an invite for if you became a Swedish citizen in the past year – are just that: voluntary.
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The Migration Agency recently brought in a mandatory requirement to attend an in-person ID check for citizenship applicants, but these are unrelated to the ceremonies organised by municipalities, which you're only invited to once you already have citizenship.
So feel free to attend the ceremony on National Day if you want, or do something else with your extra day off if that suits you better.
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