Official reports on the media
Find government reports and other public investigations on media and on freedom of expression in the Nordic countries.
Updates are published once year, in December /January. (At present, Norway and Sweden only.)
NORWAY: Official Norwegian Reports (NOU) and white papers, from 1972
A list of Official Norwegian Reports (NOU series) and Reports to the Storting (white papers) concerning the media, available online. The Official Norwegian Reports are from 1972 and onwards, while the white papers are from 1996 onwards. Publications not available online may be ordered at the Norwegian Government’s web page
Download the list of publications (in Norwegian, updated in February 2020)
Collected by: Balder Holm, Nordicom-Norway
SWEDEN: Government Official Reports (SOU), from 1922
The list includes links to Government Official Reports (SOU series) available online. For reports from 2000 and onwards, the links lead to PDF documents published on the Government's website, while older SOU reports, from 1922 to 1999, have been digitized by the Swedish National Library and published as PDF documents in the Regina database.
Reports accessible via the Regina database have keywords to facilitate searches. However, keywords are not added to the reports accessible via the government’s website.
Download the list of publications (in Swedish, updated in January 2020)
Collected by: Ulrika Facht, Nordicom-Sweden
DENMARK: Official reports and studies , from 2000
The list covers Government Official Reports and state institutions’ studies, found primarily at the Administrative Library, which is the central library and documentation centre for civil servants within the Danish central government. Among other tasks, the Administrative Library has the obligation to collect and make state institutions’ digital publications available through their database, where most of these publications are available through permanent links.
Download the list of publications (in Danish, updated in December 2018)
Collected by: Mogens Vestergaard Kjeldsen, Nordicom-Denmark
FINLAND: Official reports and studies, from 2000
The list includes official reports from the Ministry of Education and Culture (copyright issues, information society, media literacy, etc.), the Ministry of Transport and Communications (television, radio and support to other media), and the Ministry of Justice (freedom of speech). The reports are also listed in the Institutional Repository (Valto) (publication series from all Finnish ministries).
The reports are usually in Finnish, with English and Swedish summaries.
Download the list of publications (in Finnish and English, updated in January 2019)
Collected by: Maarit Jaakkola & Eva Harrie, Nordicom (2018) and Eija Poteri, Nordicom-Finland (2000-2017)
Read more: Access to information in the Nordic countries
In this publication from Nordicom, the author Oluf Jørgensen explains and compares the legal rules determining public access to documents and data in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland.
In addition, international rules emanating from the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Union are elucidated.
Read more and download the publication (published in Oct., 2014)
This English summary is based on a more comprehensive version in Danish.
The legislative processes in the Nordic countries
The processes of legislative work in the Nordic parliaments and governments are rather similar, with some national differences.
Denmark
Legislation / The Danish Parliament
Finland - English
Legislative Drafting Process Guide / Finlex
Suomi - Suomeksi
Eduskunta säätää lait / Eduskunta
Lakien säätäminen / Finlex
Iceland
The process of a Parliamentary Bill & Committee procedures / The Icelandic Parliament (PDF)
About the Icelandic Parliament (Alþingi)
Norway
Laws and legislative work / Ministry of Justice and Public Security
Legislation / The Storting (the Norwegian Parliament)
Sweden
Swedish legislation - how laws are made / Government Offices of Sweden
How the Riksdag works (Makes laws) / The Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament)
