No Retirement Route; a Pension Appears in Swedish Immigration Law Only as an Excuse From a Money Test
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Greece on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
147 exceptions recorded across 54 countries · none match Greece to Sweden · Residency as a retiree
Sweden has no residence permit for retired people. Chapter 5 of the Aliens Act was read in full and lists no ground that turns on age, on having stopped working, or on drawing a pension. A retiree with capital or a pension falls back on the same single sentence everyone else does - chapter 5, section 5, third paragraph, support arranged otherwise than through employment - and that sentence says nothing about pensions. Where a pension is named in the Act it is doing the opposite job: chapter 5, section 8 excuses a person entitled to an income-based retirement pension, a guarantee pension or old-age support from the self-support requirement that otherwise bars permanent residence, and the citizenship Act carries the matching excuse. The one route the agency describes for an older person arriving from abroad is a visit: a parent past working age visiting a child in Sweden may be given a permit for a total of one year.
At a glance
- Dedicated retirement permit
- None in chapter 5 of the Aliens Act
Chapter 5 was read in full. No ground in it turns on age, retirement or a pension.
- What a retiree uses instead
- The self-support sentence in chapter 5, section 5, third paragraph
- Pension as a qualifying income
- Not named anywhere in chapter 5 of the Aliens Act as a ground of admission
- Where a pension does count
- As an excuse from the self-support test for permanent residence
Chapter 5, section 8, point 2 of the Aliens Act. The matching excuse for naturalisation is in section 11 c of the citizenship Act.
- Longest visit the agency describes for a parent
- One year in total
Migrationsverket's page on visits longer than 90 days, for a parent no longer of working age visiting a child in Sweden.
Requirements
- Support arranged otherwise than through employment, under the general self-support sentence
- For a visit to a child in Sweden, the agency's conditions for a visitor's permit rather than a residence route
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Greece
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«Uppehållstillstånd får beviljas en utlänning som har sin försörjning ordnad på annat sätt än genom anställning.»Our translation - not official
A residence permit may be granted to a foreigner whose support is arranged otherwise than through employment.
The only provision a retiree can use, and it is not about retirement.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«har rätt att uppbära inkomstgrundad ålderspension, garantipension eller äldreförsörjningsstöd enligt socialförsäkringsbalken»Our translation - not official
is entitled to draw an income-based retirement pension, a guarantee pension or old-age support under the Social Insurance Code
Where a pension appears in the Act. It lifts the self-support condition for permanent residence rather than creating a route.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«Ett permanent uppehållstillstånd får beviljas endast om»Our translation - not official
A permanent residence permit may be granted only if
The condition the pension provision excuses: permanent residence requires the applicant to be able to support themselves and to have given no cause for doubt about their conduct.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«Föräldrar som inte längre är arbetsföra (till exempel pensionärer), och som besöker sitt barn i Sverige, kan få uppehållstillstånd i sammanlagt ett år.»The agency's own longest visit, and the only published Swedish procedure that mentions being past working age.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Swedish Migration Agency, which decides residence permits, work permits, visas and citizenship. Its site publishes, per application category, the conditions it applies, the documents it asks for, the fee, and the monetary thresholds that the Aliens Act and the Aliens Ordinance leave to it - the maintenance figure for students, the salary figure corresponding to the statutory percentage of the median wage, and the capital a self-employed applicant must hold. It carries a dated news archive that is the quickest way to learn an amending Act's commencement date, and a complete sitemap at /sitemap.xml.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It is the agency describing the law it applies, not the law. Where a page states a requirement that no instrument states - the 200,000 kronor a self-employed applicant must hold, the 51 per cent shareholding, the 700 kronor a day for a visitor - that is the agency's practice and must be cited as the agency's, never as the Aliens Act's. Its figures are dated by the year of application and move annually, so a figure quoted without its year is already wrong. The agency publishes no page at all for the self-support ground in chapter 5, section 5, third paragraph of the Aliens Act: its application menu has no category for it, which is a fact about the agency's presentation and not about the provision. News items are announcements rather than instruments and corroborate a date at best.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
This absence is bounded by chapter 5 of the Aliens Act and chapter 4 of the Aliens Ordinance, both read in full, and by Migrationsverket's own list of application categories. It is not a claim about every Swedish instrument.
A visit is not residence. A permit under chapter 5, section 10 runs out, carries no path to permanent residence under chapter 5, section 5, and the agency says in terms that it is for a visit.
- consolidatesUtlänningslag (2005:716), consolidated text as amended to SFS 2026:1752
Sveriges riksdag, Dokument och lagar
About this source
The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
- administersBesöka Sverige längre än 90 dagar
Migrationsverket
About this source
The Swedish Migration Agency, which decides residence permits, work permits, visas and citizenship. Its site publishes, per application category, the conditions it applies, the documents it asks for, the fee, and the monetary thresholds that the Aliens Act and the Aliens Ordinance leave to it - the maintenance figure for students, the salary figure corresponding to the statutory percentage of the median wage, and the capital a self-employed applicant must hold. It carries a dated news archive that is the quickest way to learn an amending Act's commencement date, and a complete sitemap at /sitemap.xml.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It is the agency describing the law it applies, not the law. Where a page states a requirement that no instrument states - the 200,000 kronor a self-employed applicant must hold, the 51 per cent shareholding, the 700 kronor a day for a visitor - that is the agency's practice and must be cited as the agency's, never as the Aliens Act's. Its figures are dated by the year of application and move annually, so a figure quoted without its year is already wrong. The agency publishes no page at all for the self-support ground in chapter 5, section 5, third paragraph of the Aliens Act: its application menu has no category for it, which is a fact about the agency's presentation and not about the provision. News items are announcements rather than instruments and corroborate a date at best.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source