A political compromise has granted a populist party its wish. But the anti-EU move has angered Germany, writes CLARE MCCARTHYin Copenhagen
DANISH POLITICS descended into farce this week after a routine exercise in legislative horse-trading between the centre-right government and its far-right ally went spectacularly awry.
The drama has seen internecine bickering among former political friends, serious questions being asked in Brussels, outrage in neighbouring Germany and so much venom heaped on an eminent political scientist that she fled the public arena.
The affair started last month when the government and the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party (DPP) cobbled up one of their customary barters: the minority coalition secured DPP votes for pension reform in return for government support for one of its pet causes.
Such trade-offs have been a consistent feature of political life since the centre-right swung into power a decade ago and the DPP’s price invariably involves a tightening of some aspect of immigration policy, be it banning residence permits for foreign spouses under the age of 25, halving welfare payouts for immigrants or cracking down on preachers who aren’t members of the established Lutheran church.
This time, the government wanted to wind down an early retirement scheme and, because the DPP’s electorate is overloaded with poor and sparsely educated Danes prone to early retirement, it was a big ask.
Badly needing a counterweight to ward off voter loss in the forthcoming general election (due by November) the DPP decided on a grandiose gesture – the reintroduction of controls at Danish borders. The image conjured up of Danish-uniformed personnel hoisting the national flag at entry points to Germany and keeping hordes of marauding eastern European criminals at bay was one that appealed to the DPP’s constituency.
It also allowed Pia Kjaersgaard, the party’s veteran leader, to host a victory celebration in parliament buildings where flag-waving supporters washed down their bacon-flavoured chips with pink champagne.
“The reintroduction of border controls is a big day for Denmark,” she said.
The DPP’s brand of nationalism is intensely anti-EU. “Border controls were torn down 10 years ago because of EU co-operation on freedom of movement. Border control has been the EU’s way of symbolising the elimination of the essential characteristics of nation states,” said DPP deputy leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl.
The party atmosphere quickly soured, as first national politicians, then German and Swedish ones and the Brussels elite started questioning the deal’s compatibility with the Schengen acquis – that part of EU law which regulates the Continent’s open borders and by which Denmark is legally bound.
Danish ambassadors across Europe fired off missives to leading media outlets explaining that police were not being deployed (this would be a clear breach of the Schengen rules) and all that Denmark was doing was introducing occasional customs checks for crime-prevention purposes.
There were two problems here. First, the original Danish-language version of the plan spoke of “permanent customs control in Denmark”, whereas the English version carried the blander title “The Danish agreement on customs control”. The worrying implication here is that two versions of the text were produced – one to appeal to Ms Kjaersgaard’s voters and another more sanitised version to appease international opinion.
More seriously, the original document was prefaced by a rationale referring to a "demonstrated increase in cross-border criminality". Despite repeated requests from The Irish Times, the government has not yet provided documentary evidence to support this claim – though it promises to do so.
However, data published on Monday by the national statistics agency indicate that the trend is in the opposite direction and that serious crime in Denmark is on the way down.
So while DPP rhetoric conjures up images of eastern European criminals washing into the country like a horde of latter-day Visigoths, the reality is more prosaic – cases of aggravated burglary have dropped from 954 in 2009 to 933 in 2010.
Further, according to a report in the Jyllands-Postennewspaper, bandito raids on private Danish homes are mostly carried out by homegrown criminals. Only two of the 36 such incidents for which convictions were secured in the 12 months to July 2010 involved eastern Europeans.
When Denmark’s border plans were floated, one of the first worried voices on the phone to Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen was José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. He expressed “serious doubts” as to whether the plan could be implemented without contravening Schengen rules.
But the gravest misgivings came from Germany and a veritable diplomatic war of words has been playing across the Schleswig-Holstein border for weeks. When Denmark’s justice minister called Germany’s objections “terrible nonsense”, the Germans countered about countries “playing with the fire of nationalism”.
Hans-Peter Friedrich, the German interior minister, put his case plainly: “We do not want a conflict with Denmark but we cannot accept that Schengen be undermined.”
While German cabinet ministers fretted about this attack on Europe’s open borders, other politicians merely saw an example worth following.
Marine Le Pen, the new leader of France’s hard-right National Front, this week grabbed the chance to launch a recruitment drive on the back of Denmark’s border efforts: “If Denmark can control its borders, why not France too?” ran the banner headline.