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Sweden's Supreme Court rejects Thunberg's climate lawsuit February 20, 2025

Writer's picture: Ana Cunha-BuschAna Cunha-Busch

Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg demonstrate outside Scandic Park Sandefjord in Norway during the Sandefjord conference. (Trond Reidar Teigen/NTB via AFP)
Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg demonstrate outside Scandic Park Sandefjord in Norway during the Sandefjord conference. (Trond Reidar Teigen/NTB via AFP)

By AFP - Agence France Presse


Sweden's Supreme Court rejects Thunberg's climate lawsuit


Sweden's Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a class action brought against the state by 300 young people, including climate activist Greta Thunberg, accusing it of climate inaction.


The first case of its kind in the Scandinavian country, the lawsuit demanded that Sweden take measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the limits of what is “technically and economically feasible”.


“The Supreme Court has now concluded that the case cannot be reviewed,” it said in a statement.


“This is because a court cannot decide that the Riksdag (parliament) or the government has to take any specific measure.


“Political bodies decide independently which specific climate measures Sweden should take,” it added.


However, the Supreme Court said it did not rule out that a climate case could be heard by the courts if it was “conceived differently” - pointing out that it was brought by a group of individuals rather than an association.


“The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in a judgment that an association that meets certain requirements can have the right to file a climate lawsuit.”


Although a group called Aurora is behind the Swedish lawsuit, it was filed on behalf of an individual, with around 300 other people joining in, according to the Supreme Court.


The court noted that there are “very high requirements for individuals to have the right to bring such an action” against a state.


“It is a fundamental principle not to allow a lawsuit to be brought by individuals to protect public interests, and climate change affects everyone.”


However, if the action were brought by an association “which meets certain requirements relating, among other things, to representativeness and adequacy, those high requirements would not apply”.


The Supreme Court said it had not addressed how the issue would be assessed if the suit had been brought by an association and if it was limited to the question of whether the state had violated its rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, Jonas Malmberg, one of the judges in the case, said in a statement.


An Aurora spokeswoman, Ida Edling, said the group would now consider its options.


“Aurora will continue to fight to prevent planetary collapses and to hold the Swedish state accountable for its illegal sourcing of the climate crisis,” Edling told AFP.


However, “the exact legal path this will take has not yet been decided”.


In a landmark ruling in April 2024, Europe's top human rights court, the European Court of Human Rights, ruled that Switzerland was not doing enough to combat climate change, the first country to be condemned by an international court for not taking sufficient action to curb global warming.


In December 2019, the Dutch supreme court ordered the government to reduce greenhouse gases by at least 25% by 2020 in another landmark case brought by an environmental group.


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