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Here is Denmark’s new Social Democrat government

Incoming prime minister Mette Frederiksen presented on Thursday the list of ministers who will form her new government.

Published: 27 June 2019 12:13 CEST

Here is Denmark’s new Social Democrat government

The new government is presented at Amalienborg Palace. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe / Ritzau Scanpix

A minority Social Democrat government will lead Denmark after agreement was reached earlier this week with three allied parties on the left of the Danish parliament.

The government includes 11 members of parliament who have previous experience as ministers, and two new ministers who are not elected MPs.

The two ministers from outside of parliament are Joy Mogensen, lord mayor of Roskilde; and Jeppe Kofod, who is a member of the European parliament.

Kofod, who will take over as foreign minister, was interviewed by The Local prior to the European elections in May. Mogensen will serve as Minister for Culture and Ecclesiastical Affairs.

READ ALSO: The Local's interview with new Danish foreign minister Jeppe Kofod

Mattias Tesfaye, who was the Social Democrats’ spokesperson on immigration in opposition, takes the post of Minister for Immigration and Integration from the outgoing Inger Støjberg.

Other key appointments include Nicolai Wammen as finance minister and Nick Hækkerup, who will be Minister of Justice, taking over respectively from Kristian Jensen and Søren Pape Poulsen, two high-profile figures in the previous government.

Dan Jørgensen, a former minister for food and the environment, will be Denmark’s new Minister for Climate and Energy.

“We have committed to a 70 percent CO2 emissions reduction by 2030. We will be one of the most ambitious countries in the world in this area. It will be a huge job,” Jørgensen said.

The full list of new ministers can be found on the Danish government's website.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about Denmark's new government agreement

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Social Democrat leader backs Sweden's harsh new immigration policies

In an interview with the Expressen newspaper, Magdalena Andersson said her party was absolutely agreed on the need for a stricter immigration policy for Sweden, going so far as to take credit for the Social Democrats for the illiberal shift.

“There is absolutely no question that need a strict set of migration laws,” she told the Expressen newspaper, rejecting the claims of Sweden Democrat Jimmie Åkesson that the government’s new program represented a “paradigm shift in migration policy”.

“The paradigm shift happened in 2015, and it was us who carried it out,” she said. “The big rearrangement of migration policy was carried out by us Social Democrats after the refugee crisis of 2015, with a thoroughgoing tightening up of the policy.”

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She said that her party would wait and see what “concrete proposals” the new government ended up making, but she said the Social Democrats were not in principle against even the new government’s most criticised proposal: to slash the number of UN quota refugees from around 5,000 to 900.

“That’s something we are going to look at,” she said. “It’s been at different levels at different points of time in Sweden.”

Rather than criticise the new government for being too extreme on migration, Andersson even attacked it for not being willing to go far enough.

The Social Democrats’ plan to tighten up labour market migration by bringing back the system of labour market testing, she said, was stricter than the plan to increase the salary threshold proposed by Ulf Kristersson’s new government.

When it comes to the new government’s plans to bring in much tougher punishments for a string of crimes, Andersson criticised the new government for not moving fast enough.

“What I think is important here is that there are a completed proposals for new laws already on the table which need to be put into effect,” she said.

She also said she was not opposed to plans for a national ban on begging.

“We Social Democrats believe that people should have the possibility to get educated, and work so they can support themselves,” she said. “That’s something we’ve believed in all along. You shouldn’t need to stand there holding your cap in your hand.”

“It’s already possible to bring in a ban in certain municipalities today,” she continued. “So the question is really whether this should be regulated at a national or a local level. We did not decide at out national congress that it should be regulated at a national level, but when the inquiry publishes its conclusions, we will assess the advantages and disadvantages and decide on whether we will keep our position or change.”

Where she was critical of the new government was in its failure to discuss how it would increase the budgets for municipalities and regional governments, who she said face being forced to drive through savage cuts in real spending to schools, healthcare and elderly care if they were not prioritised in the coming budget.

“But that’s such a tiny part of this slottsavtal (“Mansion agreement”), and the government’s policy programme suggests they’ve missed something that should really be in focus for the government,” she said, warning that citizens should be braced for dramatic fall in the quality of welfare in the coming years.

She said her party would also campaign against the new government’s plans to scrap Sweden’s goal of spending one percent of GDP on aid, and also against the new government’s plans to make it harder to build wind energy projects.

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