If your team sells by phone in Sweden, the rules may soon change from “call anyone who hasn’t said no” to “call only people who have said yes”. That would change how you build lists, how you record permission and what a good call sounds like.
On 9 July 2026, the Swedish government ordered an inquiry into phone sales to consumers. It will look at three options: a ban, which could be limited to certain sectors or products; opt-in, where consumers must agree in advance to be called; or a stronger version of today’s opt-out register. The report is due by 15 January 2027.
Sweden has not banned telemarketing, and the inquiry may recommend less than a ban. But in 2026 the Netherlands and France both moved consumer telemarketing to opt-in, and Sweden’s report is due on 15 January 2027. Whatever it recommends, the outbound teams best placed are those that can show, for every call, why they were allowed to make it and how it was handled.
The Netherlands and France moved to opt-in in 2026
The Netherlands went first. Since 1 July 2026, companies need a consumer’s prior consent before a sales call, in every sector. Firms used to be allowed to call their existing customers without it. That exception no longer covers phone calls, although it still covers email. Consent must meet the GDPR standard: freely given, specific, informed and given through a clear action.
France followed on 11 August 2026. Under a law passed in June 2025, a business may call a consumer only if that person has agreed in advance. On the same day France closed Bloctel, its national do-not-call list. Under opt-in, a list of people who don’t want calls has no job left to do.
In both countries the consent rule applies to calls to consumers. Calls between businesses still need a lawful basis under the GDPR and must respect an objection, but they don’t need consent in advance. The Swedish inquiry is framed the same way: its terms of reference talk about companies calling consumers and say nothing about business-to-business calls.
And Norway?
Norway has announced no similar change. Anyone in Norway can register in the Reservasjonsregisteret to block sales calls, and businesses must check their lists against it before they call. The last major tightening came in 2018, when the government banned hidden numbers for sales calls and stopped one business from collecting consent on behalf of several others.
That matters in two ways. Norwegian teams that call Swedish consumers will be directly affected by whatever Sweden decides. And if opt-in becomes the norm in more EU countries, the debate is likely to reach Norway too. Building your process for the stricter model now costs less than rebuilding it later.
Why business-to-business teams should pay attention
If you only book meetings with companies, this can look like someone else’s problem. Two things make that risky.
First, the line between a consumer and a business is less clear on a call list than in the law. In Sweden, the NIX register already treats sole traders and dormant companies as consumers, because the number is in practice someone’s private phone. A list sold as “decision-makers at small businesses” contains many people whose company is their mobile number. If Sweden adopts opt-in, those are the numbers that will turn a campaign into a complaint. (We cover NIX in detail in our Swedish guide to AI cold calling, in Swedish.)
Second, Sweden is already tightening the rules that exist. In 2026 the NIX rules changed so that call lists must be checked against the register every two months instead of every quarter, and consent to call a number registered with NIX now expires after three months. Each change adds a little more process to every outbound team, consumer-facing or not.
What proof of consent looks like
Under opt-in, “we had consent” is a claim you must be able to back up for a specific person, a specific company and a specific date. A column in a spreadsheet marked “yes” won’t do that. What will is a record that answers four questions for every number you call:
- Who agreed, and to which company? Consent is given to one business, not to a group of partners.
- When, and is it still valid? Consent can expire. For numbers registered with NIX in Sweden, it now lasts three months, so a sign-up at a trade fair in February doesn’t cover a call in June.
- What did they agree to? Agreeing to hear about one product is not agreeing to hear about another.
- Has it been withdrawn? When someone says no on a call, that should stop every later call to that number, on every list and in every campaign. Doing it the same day is good practice, even where the law doesn’t set a deadline.
Today, a call is wrong if the person has opted out. Under opt-in, a call is right only if you can show they opted in. That is the real change, and it is why the record matters more than the policy.
Fewer calls, so each call matters more
Opt-in also changes the numbers. When your list shrinks to people who agreed to be called, you lose the volume that used to hide a weak pitch. To take an illustration: a team that called 1,000 cold numbers to find 20 interested people might instead have a few hundred numbers, each belonging to someone who asked to hear from them.
That changes what a good call sounds like. The agent opens by referring to the request (“you asked us to call you about…”), says clearly who they are and why they’re calling, accepts “not now” without pushing, and records the outcome so the next call is correct. Each of these is something a reviewer can hear, which means you can score it.
When you score every call against criteria like “referred to the reason for the call” and “offered to stop calling”, with the moment in the transcript that supports each score, you also build the kind of record a regulator or a client may ask to see.
If an AI agent makes the calls
AI voice agents raise the stakes. An agent can call far more numbers than a person in the same time, so a mistake in the list spreads quickly. But an agent also follows the same rules on every call, as long as those rules are built into the calling system and not only written in a policy.
In practice that means three things:
- The agent calls only numbers with a valid, unexpired basis. Check this when the list is imported and again at the moment of calling, and record any withdrawal straight after the call so the number is blocked everywhere.
- The agent says it is an AI. The EU AI Act has required this since 2 August 2026, at the latest at the start of the conversation.
- The agent is held to the same scorecard as your people, so you compare them on how well they handled the customer, not on how many numbers they got through.
What to do while Sweden decides
The inquiry could recommend a ban, opt-in, a stronger register or no change. After that, the government will need time to write any new law. You don’t need to guess the outcome to prepare. These steps are useful whatever happens:
- Split your lists. Separate consumers, sole traders and companies, and know which campaigns reach which. This one change makes every future rule cheaper to follow.
- Record consent properly. For every number: who agreed, to which company, when, to what, and when it expires. If you can’t answer that today, start recording it for new leads now.
- Make “no” stop the next call. An objection on any call should block that number everywhere, without anyone updating a spreadsheet by hand.
- Add consent to your scorecard. Score how agents open the call, explain why they are calling and handle a refusal, on every call, whether a person or an AI made it.
- Practise smaller, warmer calls. Train the conversations your team will have with shorter lists: the opening that refers to what the customer asked for, and a polite way to end the call.
Teams that do this will be ready for whatever the inquiry recommends. In the meantime, they will have cleaner lists, fewer complaints and a clearer view of which calls actually work.
We can show you how ready your outbound calls are. We’ll score a sample of your real calls, made by people or by AI, against a consent and conduct scorecard, and show you where your process already meets an opt-in standard and where it doesn’t.
