There will be new elections in Denmark eight months before the end of the Folketing term. The country’s prime minister announced this on Wednesday.
Elections will be held on Tuesday, 1 November.
Mette Frederiksen (Social Democratic Party) announced the new elections outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Marienburg, but did not answer questions from the press.
– We are going to the elections as social democrats, but we are ready for compromises and cooperation. Frederiksen said it was time to find a new form of government cooperation in Denmark, a more extensive government with parties on both sides.
The call for broad government stands in stark contrast to what Frederiksen’s party, the Social Democrats, wanted in the past: to continue in one-party government.
In any case, the two largest bourgeois parties, the Conservative and the Liberal, have already refused the invitation.
Frederiksen made the following promises before the election campaign:
– We propose a comprehensive plan for a welfare society, better wages and working conditions for people and a compromise with the bureaucracy. She said the general election will be a security election, for the individual, for families and their daily financial lives.
mink scandal
The background to the new elections is that the support party Radikale Venstre has promised to submit a motion of no-confidence in the government during the opening debate of Parliament on Thursday, if no new elections are held.
Suspension: referendum on dead
The radical left says they cannot support the Mette Frederiksen government because of what appeared in the report submitted to the so-called Mink Committee this summer. There it was established that Frederiksen’s order to cull all mink in the country as a result of fear of a mutated halo variant was illegal.
It is very level playing field between the two blocs in Danish politics in the opinion polls, and many parties have not made clear which candidate for prime minister they would like to support in the upcoming elections.
In addition to Frederiksen, both Finster Jakob Elemann Jensen and Conservative Party leader Søren Pape Poulsen would like to become prime minister.
He was the youngest ever
Now Frederiksen has to run an election campaign at the same time that Denmark, like the rest of Europe, faces huge challenges.
– There is war in Europe and economic uncertainty. Prices go up for everything we needed. The important task now, Frederiksen said, is to safely pull Denmark out of the crisis.
It is a security policy, an energy policy, an economic crisis, but we know we will manage it, just as we also went through the Corona pandemic.
Frederiksen has been the Prime Minister of Denmark since June 27, 2019, when she became the country’s youngest prime minister at the age of 41. She led a social democratic minority government with the support of three red and green parties in the National Assembly.
But Radikale Ventre withdrew her support after the Mink report. Thus, only the Socialist People’s Party and the United Party remained. This is not enough to push the government forward as it is today.
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