Freedom of the Press Act (Sweden)

2 December 1766: approved, and sent to the printer

On 2 December 1766, Kungl. Maj:t — the Council of the Realm acting as the government, rather than the king personally — approved the Diet's 15 October proposal and ordered the ordinance implemented and printed.

Distribution was not immediate. The Christmas break delayed public announcement until February 1767.

Two rights in one mechanism

The ordinance ended the Chancellery's general pre-publication examination of domestic writing and transferred legal responsibility to authors and printers.

It also established the right to consult and reproduce records such as government decisions, minutes and investigations — the foundation of Sweden's principle of public access to official documents. Citizens could inspect government records and then print what they found.

UNESCO recognizes it as the world's first government-sponsored declaration of freedom of the press and the first legislation guaranteeing free communication of information.

What the compromise left standing

Three of the four estates carried the proposal; the nobility opposed the public-record provisions. Because of that, and because the procedural rules required confirmation at a later Diet, the ordinance's constitutional status was left unsettled — paragraph 14 promised constitutional-style permanence without declaring the ordinance a constitution.

It did not eliminate every form of censorship. Theological manuscripts still required consistory approval, and imported literature remained subject to review.

Anders Chydenius is commonly credited as principal drafter, but the National Library's scholarly history says the evidence is not indisputable and that the final text was edited by many hands; the surviving record names Leonard De la Rose as official author of the successful draft.