Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

Danish opposition unable to force Great Prayer Day referendum

Opposition parties in the Danish parliament will not be able to force through a referendum over the government’s plan to abolish the Great Prayer Day holiday after two parties declined to back the motion.

Published: 27 February 2023 17:27 CET
Danish opposition unable to force Great Prayer Day referendum
People protest the government plan to scrap Great Prayer Day earlier in February. The bill looks likely to pass in parliament after an opposition move to force a referendum on the issue failed. Photo: Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix

Two opposition parties – the Socialist People’s Party (SF) and Liberal Alliance – confirmed on Monday they will not join other opposition parties who say they want a referendum to be held on the question.

The parties who have stated they are in favour are the Red Green Alliance (Enhedslisten), Danish People’s Party, Denmark Democrats and Alternative.

The bill to abolish Great Prayer Day will be voted on in parliament on Tuesday and now looks set to be passed.

Under the rules of parliament, votes from 60 MPs – a third of the total 179 seats – could have sent the bill to a referendum. The four parties can only muster 26 seats between them and therefore needed help from larger opposition groups.

Some opposition parties have been reluctant to support the referendum because of concerns it would result in a “slippery slope” whereby government policy increasingly becomes the subject of referenda.

Red Green Alliance and Danish People’s Party on Sunday stated they would not call for a referendum on any other point in the government’s policy platform, citing this concern as a reason for the clarification.

“I don’t understand why on one hand you can stand on the front line and say it’s stupid and awful to abolish Great Prayer Day, which I agree with, and on the other hand not give the public the opportunity to stop it,” Red Green Alliance lead political spokesperson Mai Villadsen said.

“It’s incredibly disappointing. And it leaves the other parties with shared responsibility for not stopping this,” she said.

The three coalition government parties – the Social Democrats, Liberals (Venstre) and Moderates – want to abolish the springtime public holiday in a move they say will enable increased defence spending to meet Nato targets by 2030, three years ahead of the current schedule.

A bill was tabled by the government in January.

The policy has met with criticism from trade unions, the church and opposition parties, while the military has also distanced itself from the plan. Thousands of Danes took part in a demonstration against it outside parliament earlier this month.

READ ALSO: 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

POLITICS

Founder of far-right Danish People’s Party to retire from politics

Pia Kjærsgaard, the woman who built the far-right Danish People's Party into the kingmaker of Danish politics, transforming the country's immigration debate, has announced her retirement from parliament.

Published: 13 September 2024 17:01 CEST
Founder of far-right Danish People's Party to retire from politics

The 77-year-old, who stepped down from the leadership of her party in 2012 after 17 years at the helm, said in an interview on Friday that she would cease to be an MP when the current parliamentary term ends in 2026.

“You have to go when you are loved and respected. I feel very loved by my supporter base and by the party and also by a good part of the population,” I think it’s fair to say Kjærsgaard said in an interview on the TV2 channel. “So the time is now, after 40 years at [the parliament in] Christiansborg.” 

 
Kjærsgaard was elected as an MP for the now defunct Progress Party in 1984, leading the party for ten years between 1985 and 1995, when she left to found the Danish People’s Party. 
 
After the party became the third largest in parliament in the 2001 elections, Kjærsgaard forced the centre-right coalition led by Anders Fogh Rasmussen to push through a drastic tightening of immigration law, which her party boasted made Denmark “Europe’s strictest” country for immigration. 
 
Kjærsgaard has frequently generated controversy, accusing foreigners of “breeding like rabbits”, arguing that the 9/11 attacks did not represent a clash of civilisations as only one side was civilised, and accusing Muslim migrants of having “no desire whatsoever to take part in Danishness”, and of having “contempt for everything Western”. She has said that Islam “with fundamentalist tendencies” should be “fought to the highest degree”, condemning the religion as “medieval”. In 2020, she tried to blame minority communities for a city-wide outbreak of Covid-19 in Aarhus.

She was reported to the police in 2002 for referring to Muslims as people who “lie, cheat and deceive” in her party’s weekly newsletter, but was never prosecuted. 

The Danish People’s Party’s current leader, Morten Messerschmidt, had warm words for his party’s founder following her announcement. 

“Pia has not only been a colleague and a friend, but also an inspiration to me and many others,” he wrote on X. “Her unwavering commitment, fighting spirit and courage have characterised Danish politics for several decades.” 

Since Kjærsgaard stood down in 2012, support for the once powerful party has collapsed, with its share of the vote falling from 21 percent in the 2015 election to just 2.6 percent of the vote in the last national election in 2022.  

SHOW COMMENTS