Sweden’s new Electronic Communications Act implements the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive. The UK will be introducing similar measures on 11 December 2003.
Topic: Digital marketing
Who: The Swedish Government
Where: Stockholm
When: 25 July 2003
What happened:
The Electronic Communications Act came into force in Sweden on July 25 2003. Implementing parts the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive in good time before the 31 October 2003 deadline set by the Directive itself, the Act imposes clear legal obligations in the area of use of cookies on websites.
Since 25 July 2003 anybody visiting a Swedish website with cookies must be provided with information (1) that the website includes cookies (2) what these are used for and (3) how the cookies can be avoided.
The legislation does not require that this information is provided before the user enters the website, but that the disclosure has to be provided ‘in an obvious way’ somewhere on the site.
Commentators report that immediately upon the new law coming into force, substantial numbers of Swedish websites were immediately non-compliant.
Why this matters:
This new Swedish legislation follows closely the terms of the EU directive which the UK will be bringing into force on 11 December 2003. The provisions relating to the use of cookies which are summarised above take a very similar form in the UK’s own regulations. Whether UK websites will get their act together more efficiently in advance of the UK’s equivalent law coming into force than sites in Sweden remains to be seen.
