SWEDEN Law and Practice Contributed by: Peter Dyer, Alexandra Thörnroos and Jonna Sjöström, Wåhlin Advokater AB
and sustainably broken metals. The project uses the following criteria: • carbon footprint; and • quantity of recycled material. Another project is “Swedish Mining and Minerals Industry in a Sustainable Future”, which is a collabo - rative project between Svemin and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). The project examines the mining industry’s conditions for contributing to sustainable societal development based on different future scenarios. 3.4 Energy-Transition Minerals The Swedish bedrock contains about half of the criti - cal raw materials listed by the EU as being needed for batteries, wind turbines, solar panels and other prod - ucts in the renewable energy industry. However, there is currently no mining of these metals and minerals in Sweden – a situation attributed partly to a lengthy permitting process but also to general issues of costs and profitability compared to non-European alterna - tives. Nevertheless, Sweden remains one of the only countries in Europe where the geological conditions make it possible to contribute to reducing Europe’s dependence on imports. In 2013, the government published a Mineral Strategy identifying the need for a clearer and more effective regulatory framework, including follow-up and evalu - ation of performed initiatives to shorten environmental permitting lead-times. Since then, the problem has been discussed in numerous reports, and the continu - ing problems with permitting lead-times have been increasingly criticised by the industry. On 31 October 2022, a government-appointed public inquiry recommended substantial amendments to the Minerals Act, the Environmental Code and other laws aimed at the following, among other things: • increasing local community acceptance through better information and dialogue at an early stage and through benefit sharing using central govern - ment funds;
• improving conditions for exploration through a sim - plified permit process and by extending the maxi - mum exploration permit term from 15 to 17 years; • improving access to information about the permit process by boosting the role of the Geological Survey of Sweden into a one-stop shop and by developing new digital tools for applicants; and • strengthening the importance of innovation-critical metals and minerals in relation to other interests in the Environmental Code and underlining that both the deposits themselves and their extraction are national interests. The recommendations from the inquiry resulted in new regulations in November 2023, when the government introduced a general exemption for exploration work in respect of the restrictions in the Off-Road Driving Act (1975:1313) and abolished the need under the Environmental Assessment Ordinance (2013:251) to notify the local municipality of deep drilling activities that are within the scope of an exploration permit. The new regulations entered into force on 1 January 2024. A more extensive review of the environmental assess - ment and permitting process began in June 2023, when the government decided to appoint a special inquiry (the Environmental Permitting Inquiry), tasked with reviewing and proposing ways to simplify and shorten the permitting process under the Environ - mental Code by making it more flexible, efficient and predictable. The Environmental Permitting Inquiry pre - sented its report to the government at a press confer - ence on 21 January 2025, which included a proposal for a reform whereby cases relating to environmen - tal assessment and permitting, currently handled by several different authorities, would be transferred to a single new authority. The government subsequently issued supplementary directives to the Environmental Permitting Inquiry, including a mandate to assess the possibilities of providing early guidance on the author - ities’ fundamental view of the suitability of a certain activity at a certain location, and to analyse whether the overall processing time for the permitting proce - dure under the Environmental Code can be shortened. The Inquiry’s findings under the supplementary direc - tives are to be reported by 31 March 2026.
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