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Danish left-wing party changes stance on EU membership referendum

The left-wing Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) party no longer wants a referendum on Danish EU membership in the near future, citing the turmoil in the United Kingdom over Brexit as a background for the decision.

Published: 15 March 2019 12:08 CET
Danish left-wing party changes stance on EU membership referendum
Nikolaj Villumsen and Pernille Skipper of the Red Green Alliance. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

But the party still wants the Danish people to vote over the issue in the long term, according to comments given by its lead candidate in forthcoming EU elections.

The day after the British referendum on EU membership in 2016, the Danish party, which has 14 MPs in the Danish parliament, called for a similar vote in Denmark within a year.

But lead political spokesperson Pernille Skipper now accepts this was a mistake, Jyllands-Posten reports.

“We are not campaigning with a demand for a referendum. Instead, we are campaigning on the basis of changing the EU from within,” Skipper said.

“We have learned from Brexit that there should be great clarity over what the alternatives are before you conduct such a referendum,” she added, calling Brexit an “eye-opener” for her party.

But the Red-Green Alliance will again call for a referendum once the UK’s withdrawal is complete and there is more clarity over the implications of leaving the EU, Ritzau reports.

The UK is currently scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29th, but a majority in the British parliament voted on Wednesday to delay that date, with lawmakers unable to reach consensus over the withdrawal process.

Postponement of Brexit must be agreed to by each of the EU’s other 27 member states.

European Parliament elections are scheduled for May 26th.

The Red-Green Alliance lead candidate for those elections, Nikolaj Villumsen, stressed that his party remained EU-sceptic.

“The Red-Green Alliance is fundamentally critical of the EU, and we want a referendum on Denmark’s relationship with the EU. But it would be a requirement for us that there are clear alternatives,” Villumsen told Ritzau.

“We have no desire to copy Brexit and the chaos it has evolved into. So we do not think a referendum in Denmark is relevant until Brexit has gone through,” he said.

The party is alone in the Danish parliament in its desire for an EU membership referendum.

READ ALSO: 'Time to think about the 5 million in limbo': UK parliament votes to delay Brexit

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Border centres and ‘safe’ states: The EU’s major asylum changes explained

UPDATE: The EU parliament has adopted a sweeping reform of Europe's asylum policies that will both harden border procedures and force all the bloc's 27 nations to share responsibility.

Published: 8 April 2024 09:42 CEST
Updated: 11 April 2024 10:29 CEST
Border centres and 'safe' states: The EU's major asylum changes explained

The parliament’s main political groups overcame opposition from far-right and far-left parties to pass the new migration and asylum pact — enshrining a difficult overhaul nearly a decade in the making.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the vote, saying it will “secure European borders… while ensuring the protection of the fundamental rights” of migrants.

“We must be the ones to decide who comes to the European Union and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers,” she said.

EU governments — a majority of which previously approved the pact — also welcomed its adoption.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Greece’s migration minister, Dimitris Kairidis, both called it “historic”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe was acting “effectively and humanely” while Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi hailed what he termed “the best possible compromise”.

But there was dissent when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban derided the reform as “another nail in the coffin of the European Union”.

“Unity is dead, secure borders are no more. Hungary will never give in to the mass migration frenzy! We need a change in Brussels in order to Stop Migration!” Orban said in a post on social media platform X.

For very different reasons, migrant charities also slammed the pact, which includes building border centres to hold asylum-seekers and sending some to outside “safe” countries.

Amnesty International said the EU was “shamefully” backing a deal “they know will lead to greater human suffering” while the Red Cross federation urged member states “to guarantee humane conditions for asylum seekers and migrants affected”.

The vote itself was initially disrupted by protesters yelling: “The pact kills — vote no!”, while dozens of demonstrators outside the parliament building in Brussels held up placards with slogans decrying the reform.

The parliament’s far-left grouping, which maintains that the reforms are incompatible with Europe’s commitment to upholding human rights, said it was a “dark day”.

It was “a pact with the devil,” said Damien Careme, a lawmaker from the Greens group.

Border centres

As well as Orban, other far-right lawmakers also opposed the passage of the 10 laws making up the pact as insufficient to stop irregular migrants they accuse of spreading insecurity and threatening to “submerge” European identity.

Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of France’s far-right National Rally, complained the changes would give “legal impunity to NGOs complicit with smugglers”.

She and her party’s leader who sits in the European Parliament, Jordan Bardella, said they would seek to overturn the reform after EU elections in June, which are tipped to boost far-right numbers in the legislature.

The pact’s measures are due to come into force in 2026, after the European Commission first sets out how it would be implemented.

New border centres would hold irregular migrants while their asylum requests are vetted. And deportations of those deemed inadmissible would be sped up.

The pact also requires EU countries to take in thousands of asylum-seekers from “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece, or — if they refuse — to provide money or other resources to the under-pressure nations.

Even ahead of Orban’s broadside, his anti-immigration government reaffirmed Hungary would not be taking in any asylum-seekers.

“This new migration pact practically gives the green light to illegal migration to Europe,” Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said before the vote, adding that Budapest “will not allow illegal migrants to set foot here in Hungary”.

‘EU solidarity’

German’s Scholz said on X that the accord stands for “solidarity among European states” and would “finally relieve the burden on those countries that are particularly hard hit”.

One measure particularly criticised by migrant charities is the sending of asylum-seekers to countries outside the EU deemed “safe”, if the migrant has sufficient ties to that country.

The pact resulted from years of arduous negotiations spurred by a massive inflow of irregular migrants in 2015, many from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.

Under current EU rules, the arrival country bears responsibility for hosting and vetting asylum-seekers and returning those deemed inadmissible. That has put southern frontline states under pressure and fuelled far-right opposition.

A political breakthrough came in December when a weighted majority of EU countries backed the reforms — overcoming opposition from Hungary and Poland.

In parallel with the reform, the EU has been multiplying the same sort of deal it struck with Turkey in 2016 to stem migratory flows.

It has reached accords with Tunisia and, most recently, Egypt that are portrayed as broader cooperation arrangements. Many lawmakers have, however, criticised the deals.

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