The Sweden Democrats have announced they will campaign in the 2026 general election on a pledge to stop migration to the country.
In an op-ed for Svenska Dagbladet published on Wednesday, party leader Jimmie Åkesson and migration policy spokesperson Ludvig Aspling said Sweden’s national security must take precedence over the right to asylum, marking a hardening of the party’s already tough stance on immigration.
“Sweden’s safety must come first — even when it conflicts with the right of asylum,” Åkesson wrote in a Facebook post linking to the article.
“Before the 2026 election, we will therefore demand that Sweden be given the opportunity to completely stop migration.”
The article itself proceeds to criticize the foundation of the European Union’s asylum system, calling it flawed because it deprives individual member states of the right to determine how many asylum seekers they admit.
The nationalist duo suggests that the current rights-based asylum regime, which sets no theoretical upper limit on the number of people who can be granted protection so long as they meet the legal criteria, is not fit for purpose.
According to the party, this legal framework has created a “strange situation,” where countries like Greece, Poland, and Finland have effectively sealed their borders to asylum seekers, yet received approval from Brussels. Åkesson noted that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even praised Greece for previously closing its border with Turkey, calling it “Europe’s shield.”
“We see it as completely obvious that migration from certain countries is a direct threat to national security here in our country as well,” Åkesson and Aspling stated.
“It is time for Sweden to start adapting its actions to reality and stop treating EU rules as if they were Swedish law.”
While Åkesson initially vowed to give Swedish voters the chance to “completely stop migration,” the article suggests a Sweden Democrats administration would initially clamp down on asylum policy and pause migration from specific regions, reserving the right to halt migration in its entirety should the deteriorating security situation in Sweden not improve.
Hellbound and Down 