Is it legal to record a meeting in Denmark?

Straffeloven § 263 stk. 2 no. 2. The operative clause: "samtale mellem andre eller forhandlinger i et lukket møde, som den pågældende ikke selv deltager i", a conversation between others, or the proceedings of a closed meeting, in which the person concerned does not himself take part. The subsection requires the use of an apparatus (ved hjælp af et apparat) and that the listening or recording be secret.

§ 263 stk. 1 is the separate data-system intrusion offence, punishable by fine or up to one year and six months. Stk. 2 carries a fine or up to six months. Stk. 3 raises the maximum to six years for trade-secret purposes or systematic offending.

A sourcing note. The official database is retsinformation.dk, a single-page application whose document search would not resolve to the current consolidation from the tools available, so the consolidating LBK number and its official deep link are a gap. The operative clause above was read from a readable mirror.

Yes, and Datatilsynet says so in terms: "Straffeloven forbyder bl.a. hemmelig aflytning eller optagelse af samtaler mellem andre. … Straffeloven indebærer, at det normalt vil være forbudt i tilknytning til en tv-overvågning også at aflytte eller optage lyd, medmindre aflytningen eller optagelsen sker med samtykke fra mindst en af deltagerne i den samtale, der aflyttes eller optages."

The Criminal Code prohibits secret eavesdropping on or recording of conversations between others, and audio alongside TV surveillance is normally prohibited unless it takes place with the consent of at least one of the participants. That is a one-party rule, and the recorder is the one party.

Nothing in Danish criminal law requires you to say anything as a participant. GDPR does, and it wants the information before the substance of the meeting rather than after it.

Quick note before we start: I'm recording this so I can write my notes up afterwards. It transcribes on my laptop, nothing goes to the cloud, and I only keep the text. Say so now if you'd rather I didn't.

Longer versions, and what to do when someone says no, are on telling people you're recording.

On the form of notice, no Danish authority was found at all: nothing on whether a participant's notice must be express, whether it can be implied from continuing to speak, or whether a calendar invite suffices. We would rather say that than guess.

GDPR applies as well, and the analysis is the ordinary European one: a meeting recording is personal data about every identifiable speaker, a transcript without speaker labels is still personal data, the household exemption is read narrowly and a work meeting has a direct connection to a professional activity, you need a lawful basis, and Art. 13 wants the information at the time the data are obtained, which for an always-on recorder means before the substance of the meeting. The European framework covers all of that once rather than on every country page.

Denmark has no statutory works council. Control measures are governed by collective agreement, principally the DA/LO Samarbejdsaftale, which is generally understood to require notice before introducing control measures. We could not verify that, so treat it as unconfirmed rather than as a rule.

Two verified points from Datatilsynet do bear on a workplace rollout. Single-person offices may not be TV-monitored without the employee's consent, and that follows from the Criminal Code rather than from the surveillance act. And where workplace TV surveillance is introduced, an agreement with the employees should be sought (søges opnået en aftale med de ansatte), signage is required, and the employer must give employees and others with regular access the GDPR information in advance, for example in workplace guidelines or a staff handbook.

Datatilsynet's FAQ confirms the one-party rule under the Criminal Code and treats audio alongside camera surveillance as normally prohibited without one participant's consent. Datatilsynet also notes that it is not the supervisory authority for the TV surveillance act; that is the police.

Nothing was found specifically about transcription or meeting recording.

Because the binding layer in Denmark is data protection rather than criminal law, this is where the product's architecture does real work. Transcription runs on your own device, the audio is never written to disk, and nothing is sent anywhere. There is no cloud component, so on our reading we are not a processor under Art. 4(8), which processes personal data on behalf of a controller and presupposes receiving it. That means no Art. 28 data processing agreement to sign with us, no sub-processor list, no international transfer and no transfer impact assessment, because there is no transfer. We found no decision squarely holding that an on-device-only vendor is not a processor, so that is reasoning you can check rather than a settled point.

What it does not do is disclose anything. There is no bot in the participant list and no banner on anyone else's screen, so the transparency obligation rests entirely on you saying something. Earkeep does not make anyone compliant and could not: a tool cannot be compliant, only a processing operation can be lawful.

Where it helps in the room is that stopping is real and checkable. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your operating system's own recording indicator goes dark in front of the person who asked. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record. And a stretch of the day, or a saved meeting with its transcript, can be purged from the file on your own disk, with no server copy anywhere to reconcile against.

• Straffeloven § 263 (readable mirror)
• Retsinformation.dk, the official database
• Datatilsynet, ofte stillede spørgsmål
• GDPR, EUR-Lex

• European recording laws: the four layers, the controller question, and all 32 countries.
• Telling people you're recording: the scripts, and the three ways to stop.
• Private by design: why the audio never leaves your computer.

This page is legal information, not legal advice. It summarises provisions and guidance rather than replacing them, and we are not lawyers. If the answer matters, ask someone who can be held to their answer.