Sweden, Sex Work, Screens: The Criminalisation of Online Sex Work and Article 8 of the ECHR

Sweden has quietly taken a radical step: it is now illegal to purchase online sexual acts. This move advances Sweden’s long-standing “end demand” policy model for tackling sexual services from the physical realm, into the digital. Yet it seems to overlook the significant differences between the two spheres – in terms of behaviour models, profiles, and market dynamics – and how such differences may be taken into account when determining the persuasiveness of the law’s rationale. This becomes especially clear when measured against the protections enshrined under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and recent Strasbourg case law.

While the criminalisation of the purchase of in-person sexual services has been judged to be compatible with Article 8, the underlying reasoning rests on factors that do not translate to the online sphere: combatting prostitution and human trafficking, a lack of consensus on sex work policy across Europe, and an inability to parse the harms caused by the law from the harms caused by sex work itself. Sweden’s extension of its “end demand” policy into digital sex work thus risks overstepping the boundaries of Article 8 of the ECHR and reveals how laws that are directly transplanted from the offline to the online sphere without due thought may lead to the erosion of private digital rights.