The Finance and Social Affairs Ministries will be dealing with the longest lists of reforms, and each has political hot potatoes in its mix – subletting and transgender sterilization, respectively.

The government hopes that giving more flexibility to apartment owners to set rent for tenants will spur an increase in subletting, which in turn could ease the housing crunch by offering a financial incentive to rent out unused flats.

Annoyed tenancy organisations, however, have argued such a reform wrests power away from Sweden’s cooperative model of housing. They fear that rent inflation could make apartments too expensive for students, the unemployed, and other economically vulnerable groups.

Another controversial topic is the Swedish law that requires transgendered patients to be sterilized in order to legally change their sex. The government has removed the stipulation that transgender patients be Swedish citizens, only to add “the same sterilization requirement will apply to Swedish and foreign citizens.”

Swedes set for slew of new laws in 2013 - The Local