On 1 November 2024, the Swedish Competition Authority has started applying its statement regarding free access to procurement documents. This means that contracting authorities are now, according to the Swedish Competition Authority, expected to make standard contracts such as AB04 and ABT06 available free of charge to tenderers in all public procurement processes.
On Wednesday 29 May 2024, the Swedish Parliament voted to adopt a bill to transpose the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive into local law. The new reporting requirements will enter into force on 1 July 2024 meaning that companies will have to report pursuant to the CSRD for the first time for the fiscal year beginning after June 2024. Accordingly, all companies with a calendar year as fiscal year will have to apply the legislation for the first time for FY2025.
On Wednesday 29 May 2024, the Swedish Parliament voted to adopt a bill to transpose the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) into local law. The new reporting requirements will enter into force on 1 July 2024 meaning that companies will have to report pursuant to the CSRD for the first time for the fiscal year beginning after June 2024. Accordingly, all companies with a calendar year as fiscal year will have to apply the legislation for the first time for FY2025.
On 22 May 2024, the Swedish Parliament is expected to vote on a proposal to remove the requirement to retain original hard copy accounting materials. The bill, published on 29 February 2024, proposes that hard copy accounting materials, which have been duly saved digitally, no longer have to be kept in hard copy. The amendments are proposed to enter into effect on 1 July 2024.
As of 1 January 2024, the Swedish Competition Authority will have increased authority to supervise public procurements. The powers have been adopted in order to make procurement supervision more effective.
Under the new rules, the Swedish Competition Authority may now make decisions on procurement fines without having to apply for a review of the fine in court. This presupposes, however, that the procurement did not begin before 1 January 2024.
According to Article 40.1 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the national supervisory authorities in the European Economic Area shall “encourage the drawing up of codes of conduct intended to contribute to the proper application” of the GDPR. A prerequisite for codes of conduct to be prepared by Swedish associations and bodies, which represent categories of personal data controllers or processors, is that the Swedish Data Protection Authority (IMY), pursuant to Art. 41 GDPR, has to establish the requirements that will apply to their accreditation bodies, the so-called supervisory bodies, which will be responsible in monitoring compliance with the code of conduct by the controllers or processors that undertake to apply it.
Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled Sanctions Enforcement Around the World, the Swedish Perspective on 31 May 2023. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.
On 22 March 2023, the European Commission tabled a proposal for a Directive on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims.
The proposal aims to harmonize the evaluation and monitoring of voluntary environmental claims – often referred to as “green claims” – towards EU consumers and control the proliferation of public and private environmental labels. Complementing the March 2022 proposal for a Directive on empowering consumers for the green transition as a lex specialis by providing more specific requirements on the substantiation, communication and verification of green claims, it contributes to the fight against “greenwashing”.
The Swedish Parliament and Government have decided to amend the Swedish dual-use regulations in order to strengthen the control of dual-use products and technical assistance. The Swedish regulations contain supplementary provisions to EU regulation 2021/821 on dual-use items. The changes will take effect on 1 August 2022.
Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled “Russia imposes a ban on foreign aircraft flights from 36 states” on 1 March 2022. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.