Kristersson said that "a final step comes on March 2" when the Swedish government would decide on new laws for fighting terrorism, as quoted by the newspaper.
"It's such a big piece of legislation that we actually had to change our constitution as of January 1 to be able to introduce it," the minister also said, as quoted in the report.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Saturday that he was actively working to ensure that Sweden and Finland join the bloc by the NATO summit in Lithuania, scheduled for July 11-12.
Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022, several months after Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine. Their accession protocols have already been ratified by all NATO members except Hungary and Turkiye.
The accession process came to a standstill in January 2023 after Rasmus Paludan, the leader of the far-right Danish political party Stram Kurs, burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm with permission from the Swedish authorities. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then condemned the demonstration and said Sweden should not count on Ankara's support for its NATO bid.