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Sweden's top court rejects Greta Thunberg lawsuit on climate action
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on February 19, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 26, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
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Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on February 19, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 26, 2026
Sweden's Supreme Court dismissed Greta Thunberg's climate lawsuit, citing procedural issues. The Aurora group plans further legal actions.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Greta Thunberg and hundreds of other activists cannot proceed with a class action lawsuit that had sought to force the state to take stronger action against climate change.
Activists filed a lawsuit in 2022 arguing that the state violates the European Convention on Human Rights by not doing enough to limit climate change, or mitigate its effects, and the case has since been subject to review on procedural grounds.
The group of 300 plaintiffs in the case, who call themselves the Aurora group, wanted the courts to order Sweden to do more to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
"A court cannot decide that parliament or the government should take any specific action without the democratic bodies deciding independently on those issues," Supreme Court Justice Jonas Malmberg told Reuters.
But the court did not rule out that a climate lawsuit formulated differently could be heard in Sweden, as the European Court of Justice has said groups meeting certain requirements may have the right to sue over climate change.
"The Supreme Court states in its decision that such a case could only concern the question of whether individuals' rights under the convention have been violated, not what specific measures the state is obliged to take," it said in a statement.
The Aurora group said it would review its legal options.
"We will continue to desperately try to prevent planetary collapses and get Sweden to do their legal duty to respect human rights and stop making the planetary crisis worse," Aurora's legal and scientific coordinator Ida Edling told Reuters.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Swiss government had violated the rights of an association of senior women by failing to do enough to combat climate change.
But it rejected two other cases, including one filed by six young Portuguese individuals brought against 32 European countries where the plaintiffs said states were failing to avert catastrophic climate change.
The court said those individuals first needed to seek a ruling in Portugal.
(Reporting by Ali Withers, Anna Ringstrom, Louise Rasmussen and Stine Jacobsen; Editing by Terje Solsvik and Helen Popper)
Sweden's Supreme Court ruled that Greta Thunberg and other activists cannot proceed with their class action lawsuit against the state regarding climate action.
The activists claimed that the Swedish state was violating the European Convention on Human Rights by not doing enough to combat climate change.
The court indicated that a differently formulated climate lawsuit could potentially be heard in Sweden, focusing on whether individuals' rights under the convention have been violated.
The plaintiffs, known as the Aurora group, consist of around 300 activists who sought to compel the Swedish government to take stronger action against climate change.
The ECHR previously ruled that the Swiss government violated the rights of an association by failing to adequately combat climate change, although it rejected two other cases, including one from young Portuguese individuals.
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