They have been preparing for almost two years. On Friday, more than 600 Swedish children and young people, will sue the Swedish state for what they claim to be a flawed climate policy. Among them are three seven-year-olds – and Greta Thunberg.
Sweden's climate policy is illegal. This is the opinion of the organization Aurora, which on Friday submits its lawsuit against the Swedish state.
Greta Thunberg is also among the participants. She tells DN that a fundamental challenge with taking the legal route is that the system – the laws themselves – needs to be changed. In recent years, a wave of similar lawsuits has swept the world. In the Netherlands, the organization Urgenda won against the government, which has since been forced to tighten its climate targets. In the spring of 2021, the German state was sued by a group of young people, led by climate activist Luisa Neubauer – and there too, the government was forced to tighten climate targets.has come to Sweden.
The lawsuit is being filed after a period of strong criticism of the new government's way of handling environmental and climate policy. After presenting a budget in which a third of the 2023 reform space was allocated to fossil subsidies, the Minister of Finance was asked by newspaper Svenska Dagbladet whether the government will meet the climate target by 2030 and answered:But Aurora would have filed the lawsuit regardless of the outcome of the September election, says Ida Edling.