Tourism Law in Europe

2 The country differs a great deal from the north where you can find the midnight sun and northern lights, to the south where you find fertile agricultural landscapes with vast fields of canola and poppy in the summer. The Swedish outdoors thus covers a wide range of different nature; archipelagos and islands, arctic nature, vast woodlands, mountains, fertile landscapes, lakes and rivers etc. Despite the size of the country, Sweden is sparsely populated with a population of approximately 10,4 million. Large parts of Sweden is almost unpopulated. Because hereof, Swedish nature is easy to access, which opens up for a lot of different ways for tourists to experience Sweden. The generous access to the Swedish countryside may also be used by tourism companies and organisations in their business, creating good conditions for companies to arrange activities in the wild. Public access rights, or Allemansrätten , as it is called in Sweden, gives everyone a right to roam freely in the countryside, irrespective of who owns the land 2 . It is forbidden to destroy or damage the nature or to disturb animals or plants. Allemansrätten is laid down in the Swedish constitution 3 . Water, such as lakes and rivers, constitutes almost 10 % of Sweden’s area. It is free to fish in the seas and in the five big lakes. Everywhere else you need a fishing permit, which often can be obtained in tourist offices, camping sites or local stores. 2. Legal Environment There is no general tourism act in Sweden. There are however a lot of special acts which must be adhered to by tourism companies, some of which are mentioned in this article. There are not many areas where you need a formal license or authorisation, but there are some regulations which requires that certain businesses, for example restaurants, shall be notified to or registered with an authority. In Sweden there is for example no formal regulations for guides, i.e., anyone may call him- or herself a guide and provide guided tours, in cities, at tourist attractions or in the wild. 2 Certain rules, however, apply in national parks and other areas designated as areas of interest for conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora, for instance. 3 Kungörelse (1974:152) om beslutad ny regeringsform-