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RESIDENCE PERMITS

Danish government wants to scrap residence permits for people it cannot deport

Denmark’s government wants to abolish a rule under which asylum seekers who are unable to leave the country for 18 months after being ordered to do so, can be granted a residence permit.

Published: 6 September 2024 10:13 CEST

Danish government wants to scrap residence permits for people it cannot deport

Danish immigration minister Kaare Dybvad Bek wants to scrap a minor rule which grants residence permits to a handful of asylum seekers each year. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

A rule which allows foreign nationals to stay in Denmark if they are unable to leave within 18 months of their asylum claims being rejected looks likely to be scrapped by the Danish government.

Under the rule, rejected asylum seekers who are unable to return to their home countries – despite being willing to do so – for 18 months can be granted a residence permit, if their immediate deportation is considered improbable.

Deportations from Denmark can be prevented by situations in home countries, for example a lack of diplomatic relations or a formal deportation agreement between the country and Denmark.

In practice, the situation occurs rarely, according to a Ministry of Immigration and Integration press statement released on Friday. Nevertheless, it is seeking to have the rule scrapped.

“This is a rule which is expensive to administrate in relation to the very few residence permits that end up being given,” Immigration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek said in the statement.

“And it’s also about foreigners whose claims for asylum have been processed under all the right rules but who do not need protection. They do not have the right to be in Denmark,” he said.

In the statement, the ministry said it will publish a formal proposal to scrap the rule. The bill will initially go through a hearing phase before being voted on in parliament, in line with the normal legislative process.

In some cases, Denmark will still be required to grant residence permits in specific circumstances in accordance with the country’s international human rights obligations. That includes situations in which the foreign national is required to have a residence permit if, for example, they are seriously ill or have close family connections to one or more persons who live in Denmark.

Bek said he considers it “fair and sensible” to scrap the rule.

“I’m not going to pretend this is revolutionising immigration rules. But I think it’s the right thing to do as a matter of principle,” he said.

“It also means one less rule to administrate, allowing us to save a little bit of superfluous bureaucracy,” he added.

A total of 18 residence permits were issued under the rule between 2016 and June 2024, according to figures released by the ministry.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.