The Swedish Supreme Court has ruled that the news agency Nyhetsbyrån Siren may not disclose court documents to paying customers in its databases. The decision means that the EU’s data protection regulation outweighs the Swedish principle of public access to official documents and may also affect other legal databases such as Lexbase.

In 2024, a number of courts refused to disclose public documents to, among others, Nyhetsbyrån Siren and various legal databases, citing the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The news agency uses these documents for journalistic purposes, but also in its Acta Publica and Be Informed databases, where it is possible to see who has been convicted of various crimes.

At the end of last year, the Upper Norrland Court of Appeal ruled, among other things, that Siren was not entitled to keep a complete register of convictions, and that the social security numbers, names and addresses of individuals could not reach the public via their paying customers. Siren was only allowed to use this information for “journalistic purposes”.

The Supreme Court has now ruled that the Court of Appeal’s decision was correct and that documents cannot be shared with paying customers in a database.

In Sweden, public documents such as court decisions are subject to the principle of public access to official documents, which means that everyone has the right to access public documents. Since Siren and other databases have a publishing license, Swedish law also allows them to store this information and, in practice, to publish it to paying customers. However, under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, personal data may not be stored without the person’s consent. The Supreme Court’s decision involves a reinterpretation of what should carry more weight, the Swedish Constitution or the EU Data Protection Regulation. In this case, it has sided with the EU.

Major impact

– The Supreme Court thus makes the assessment that the system that the legislator wanted to achieve cannot be reconciled with the EU Data Protection Regulation. The Court has therefore interpreted the Swedish regulations so that it is possible to take the GDPR into account when applying the Freedom of Information and Secrecy Act. Legislative measures are needed to achieve a more comprehensive balance between freedom of expression and information and data protection, said Petter Asp, one of the justices who participated in the ruling, in a press release.

The decision is also likely to affect other legal databases such as Ratsit, MrKoll and Lexbase, which currently allow paying customers to search for court decisions.

– There may not be access to these databases in the same way in the future, Asp told the tax-funded SVT.

In a study last year, the government’s investigator, Daniel Gustavsson, proposed that constitutional protection should be limited for search services that publish personal data. Such a change in the law would mean a change in the Swedish constitution.