© Philip Davali/Ritzau Scanpix via REUTERS

Denmark’s Social Democrats are expected to form the next government following Wednesday’s parliamentary elections, after winning 26 percent of the vote. Their leader, Mette Frederiksen, campaigned on a platform of more investment in welfare and healthcare, strong action on climate change—and a much harder line on immigration than previous Social Democrat governments.

The liberal, center-right party of Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Venstre, came second with 23 percent. “We had a really good election, but there will be a change of government,” Løkke said, conceding defeat.

Meanwhile, support for the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), which had supported Løkke’s government, plummeted to 8.7 percent from 21.1 percent in 2015, largely because mainstream parties have adopted much of their harsh “foreigner policy.”

No Hygge In Sight

The harsh approach to immigration can be a bit of a jolt for foreign observers of Danish politics. One could be forgiven for thinking that all that hype about hygge (a unique kind of coziness and togetherness supposedly involving candles and cups of tea) a few years ago was a deliberately orchestrated smoke-screen covering some rather un-cozy truths about the situation in Denmark.

The run-up to the election was quite circus-like, with 13 different parties, some of them extreme or peculiar, vying for seats in parliament. And the debate isn’t that hyggelig at all. Danish politics has become a talent show where candidates compete to outdo one another in dreaming up new anti-immigration policies.

About three years ago, the center-left underwent a sea change. In a Facebook post on July 27, 2016, Frederiksen wrote that the popularity of Donald Trump, who had yet to be elected US president, had led her to change her thinking: “We must admit that the people he is talking to feel for the first time that there is a voice that speaks to their fears and frustrations.”

She seemed to be referring to the white working class, which is allegedly under pressure from globalization and immigration, those “deplorables” who seem to have been courted by Trump and other populists across the Western world. Of course, this came on the heels of the 2015 “refugee crisis,” when about 20,000 of the roughly one million Syrians and other refugees who came to Europe made it to Denmark. Instead of triggering empathy for the actual refugees, images of Arab families walking along a Danish highway seemed to have struck fear in the hearts of many Danes and drove more of them into the arms of the far-right.

Social-Democratic Rethink

Out of this fertile soil grew the Social Democratic re-think. In an article titled “Realistic and fair immigration” published earlier this year in the magazine International Politics and Society, Fredericksen outlined an “immigration policy to unite Denmark,” which comprised three main pillars.

First, severely limit the number the “non-Western immigrants” (meaning Muslim or dark-skinned people) allowed into Denmark. Only a few UN refugees should be let in, if any at all. Second, devote resources to fighting the causes of immigration, meaning more development aid for the countries. Third, prevent what the Danes call “ghettos” from forming—neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrants and social problems.

She wrote, “A 10-year plan must be applied to ensure that no residential areas, schools or educational institutions have more than 30 percent non-Western immigrants and descendants in future. And more have to contribute to Danish society. That is why we want to introduce an obligation for all immigrants on integration benefits and cash benefits to contribute 37 hours a week.”

In fact, much of this corresponds more or less with the previous center-right government’s policies. After the arrival of so many refugees in 2015, Denmark instated border checks and stopped even taking the 500 “quota” refugees per year selected by the United Nations that it had been accepting since 1989. The total number of asylum applications accepted dropped from about 12,000 in 2016 to 1,600 in 2018, and most of these aren’t recent arrivals, but people who have been stuck in bureaucratic limbo for years.

“Ghetto Deal”

Then there’s the “ghetto deal” which was reached between Venstre and the Social Democrats. It is meant to tackle the problem of integration with measures specifically targeting areas with a large number of ethnic minorities. Critics say it piles another layer of discrimination upon people already suffering from discrimination and stigmatizes whole segments of the population.

Immigrant rights advocate Michala Clante Bendixen wrote on her website refugees.dk in February 2019: “The deal gives double sentences for crimes committed in the area, residents are excluded from family reunification, and the bilingual children lose their children’s benefit if they are not enrolled in a nursery from the age of one. These rules are especially targeting ethnic minorities.”

The idea is that the little Mohammads and Aishahs growing up in these places should be turned into proper Danes with proper Danish values. This means more than just decorating birthday cakes with Danish flags—it also means things like valuing gender equality and so on. But critics say a lot of this is merely “symbolic politics,” pointing to the fact that the vast majority of immigrant children in those neighborhoods already visit daycare from an early age.

Broad Support

This harder line on immigration is supported by 75 percent of the population, says Arne Hardis, a political writer for the weekly broadsheet Weekendavisen. “If you want to be in government in Denmark you have to have a strong immigration policy and you have to have a strong welfare state. And these two things go very well together. The fewer foreigners, the more for us. It’s very simple. We have very high costs for welfare for foreigners—30-35 billion kroner (€4-4.7 billion) a year.”

Despite the already harsh line on immigrants, two populist forces to the right of the Danish People’s Party with more extreme ideas about foreigners emerged before the election: Nye Borgerlige (New Right) and Stram Kurs (Hard Line). The latter is led by Rasmus Paludan, a lawyer who incited riots this spring by publicly burning the Quran and who advocates the deportation of all Muslims from Denmark.

Both of these groups have siphoned support away from the original anti-immigration camp, the Danish People’s Party, who suffered a huge loss of support already in this year’s European elections on May 26. Paludan’s appearance out of nowhere serves as a memo to the center left and right that they’d better stay tough on immigration or else Denmark’s ugly, racist underbelly will rise to the surface and cause havoc. Nye Borgerlige scraped by with 2 percent of the vote and will occupy 4 seats in the new parliament. Rabble-rouser Paludan didn’t make it past the 2 percent hurdle.

Minority Government

Now the Social Democrats leader Frederiksen is expected to form a minority government that would allow her to work with the four smaller socialist and progressive parties in parliament on issues like welfare and the environment, while securing the right’s support on immigration issues.

She will have to perform a delicate balancing act. To placate the left, she might have to throw them a bone or two such as scrapping the previous government’s controversial plans (originally cooked up by the Danish People’s Party) to send asylum seekers convicted of crimes to a remote island or perhaps devoting more resources to improving the lives of traumatized refugee children growing up in depressing refugee centers (this has been a point of fierce debate on Danish TV). Or perhaps these potential allies will be pacified by a stronger climate policy or investments in social programs.

If the smaller left-wing parties don’t cooperate, she might threaten to form a centrist coalition with Venstre, possibly with the support of the Radikale, a liberal center-left party who were able to grow their share of the vote to 8 percent and have been known to flirt with the center-right.

Whatever the constellation, it seems clear that 41-year-old Frederiksen will be prime minister and stick to a policy that has worked for her party. On election night, as she celebrated the party’s results she said: “Voters who have deserted us over recent years, who thought our immigration policy was wrong, have come back this time, that is what many have told me.”

The post Denmark: More Fearful Than Cozy appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

My foreign correspondent’s new year’s resolution for 2016 – to travel less and live more – lasted all of two days. Last Sunday I found myself on a plane to Copenhagen to witness the new ID checks put in place on the border between Denmark and Sweden at midnight. Two days later I was in Cologne in the wake of the shocking physical and sexual attacks on women welcoming the new year.

Different countries, related problems: both further dashed hopes that Europe will be able to defuse the growing frustrations and fears of ordinary people in what have become extraordinary times.

On a sunny but freezing morning in Copenhagen I boarded what used to be the direct train to Malmö in Sweden. It now stopped at Copenhagen Airport. When we arrived, we headed up to the station and down to another platform, separated from the Copenhagen train by a provisional wire fence. On the frigid platform of Copenhagen Airport, Danish rail (DSB) has set up 34 security queues manned by 150 private security staff to photograph and store the IDs of around 18,000 people who use this line daily. No ID, no travel.

While I wondered about the legal implications of a private company policing my right to travel in the EU, the train began the second leg of the journey to Malmö. A Swedish woman sitting opposite me was furious at the “stupidity” of measures she says will just inconvenience ordinary people who live in Malmö but work in Copenhagen. About 8,000 commute between the two countries. On my return journey, I got off again at Copenhagen Airport station and met one.

Susan Flygenring, 37, hurtled down the travelator to catch the waiting train to Malmö. Last week she would have made it, but the ID scan robbed her of a few precious seconds; the doors slammed and the train left without her. “This is horrible, I feel like crying, I really needed to get that train to pick up my children,” said Flygenring.

For her and thousands of others, the Øresund bridge was a lifeline and a promise: allowing her to juggle work and family in two different European countries. But the growing tensions migration has put on EU free movement mean, for her, uncertainty about her way of life. “We used to be so free going back and forth between Sweden and Denmark, now we need a passport,” she said. “This isn’t what we were promised.”

On the surface it seems as if Sweden is acting because of an EU failure, but the opposite is the case. This is a failure of national governments meeting in Brussels to do what the EU was set up to do, and what their voters have elected them to do: to solve problems together that cannot be solved alone.

Sweden has stepped up border checks because Stockholm says it cannot absorb another 160,000 asylum seekers, as it did last year, while its neighbors sit on their hands rather than reach a robust, realistic, and functioning burden-sharing agreement. Reimposing ID checks between Sweden and Denmark is a massive blow here, ending half a century of free travel in the so-called Nordic Passport union – a forerunner to the later Schengen zone that offers EU citizens free travel through much of the continent.

It took just 12 hours for Denmark to respond: anxious not to become a dead-end for Sweden-bound asylum seekers, Copenhagen imposed ID spot checks on its border with Germany at noon on Monday and will continue them until next Thursday, with a possibility of extending them or stepping them up to full border controls.

As I left Denmark, I wondered whether January 4, 2016 will be identified later as the day Schengen – and with it the EU – began to unravel. Rather than fly back to Berlin, I took a detour to Cologne. Usually on January 6 the city celebrates its three most famous – if deceased – residents, the Bible’s three wise men. But this time, Cologne was a city of angry, fearful women.

Days earlier, scores of them had been attacked, robbed, and sexually assaulted by a gang of up to 1,000 drunken men gathered between the train station and the cathedral. Police say the attackers were of North African appearance; many were known to authorities. “Suddenly I felt a hand on my bum, on my breasts, I was grabbed everywhere, it was horrific,” one woman named Katia told the Express newspaper. “I was desperate, it was like running the gauntlet. Over the space of 200 meters, I think I must have been touched 100 times.”

Evelin, 24, was with her friends in the square between the train station and Cologne Cathedral at the same time. “I had a knee-length skirt on, suddenly I felt a hand on my bottom and under my skirt,” she said. “I turned around and stared into a sea of grinning faces.”

The reports were terrible, but the police response was worse. First the police issued a statement on January 1 noting a “relaxed atmosphere” in the city the night before. They only changed their mind when confronted with a tsunami of outrage on social media at that gross misrepresentation. The number of criminal complaints filed has now reached 516 – including two complaints of rape. Yet even after they were caught in a lie, the Cologne police made a bad situation worse by denying they were overwhelmed or ill-prepared on New Year’s Eve.

A leaked police report last Thursday suggested otherwise, complaining of officers frustrated at being unable to offer effective protection because they were “at their limit.” Federal police who patrol the area around Cologne train station admitted to me that they are desperately understaffed because around half of their number have been deployed to Germany’s borders.

If people don’t feel safe, they look for someone to blame. Leaving Cologne, I listened to far-right pipers’ demand for “cleaner, safer cities” being shouted at far-left groups. The knot in my stomach tightened.

For months I have been waiting for a long-overdue terrorist attack to poison Germany’s already wavering public opinion of the refugee crisis. But after the Munich terror alerts on New Year’s Eve, the Cologne attacks may achieve the same effect: push insecure and angry people into the arms of populists who accuse the state of being a soft touch with migrants, and the media of airbrushing crimes carried out by non-nationals.

It’s a similar picture in Sweden and Denmark, where mainstream political failures in this time of unprecedented challenge have seen a drift to populist alternatives. These populists are more interested in stoking up hate against immigrants and damaging European integration than helping their vulnerable neighbors – but history shows that this is something insecure people usually only realize when it’s too late.

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