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EUROPEAN UNION

Danes vote to scrap country’s EU defence opt-out

An overwhelming majority of Danes, almost 67 percent, have voted in favour of joining the EU's common defence policy 30 years after opting out, results of Wednesday's referendum showed.

Published: 1 June 2022 22:41 CEST
Supporters of Denmark's centre-left Social Liberal s celebrate and of EU defence opt-out
Supporters of Denmark's centre-left Social Liberal (Radikale Venstre) party celebrate after the country overwhelmingly voted to scrap its EU common defence opt-out in a June 1st, 2022 referendum. Photo: Claus Bech/Ritzau Scanpix

A clear majority of Danes has voted to revoke the country’s opt-out on joint EU defence policy in a national referendum held on Wednesday.

Public service broadcaster DR called the result of the referendum less than 90 minutes after polls closed, with around 58 percent of votes counted.

The distance between the “yes” and “no” votes was already insurmountable with under two-thirds of votes counted, DR said.

That was borne out with 66.9 percent having voted “yes” against 33.1 percent voting “no” with 100 percent of the votes counted just after 11pm according to KMD, which operated the referendum’s electronic result count.

Turnout for the referendum was 65.8 percent, DR reported. 

“Tonight Denmark has sent a very important signal. To our allies in Europe and NATO, and to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. We’re showing, that when Putin invades a free country and threatens the stability in Europe, we others pull together,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told cheering supporters.

“There was a Europe before February 24th, before the Russian invasion, and there is another Europe after”, she said after the results came in.

“When there is once again war on our continent, you can’t be neutral,” she said.

EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel on Wednesday welcomed Denmark’s “historic choice” to join the bloc’s joint defence policy, after referendum exit polls suggested an overwhelming majority of Danes voted in favour.

Denmark’s decision was a “strong message of commitment to our common security”, von der Leyen tweeted, saying Denmark and the European Union would benefit. Michel also hailed the country’s “historic choice” on Twitter.

With the war in Ukraine forcing countries in Europe to rethink their security policy, Denmark voted earlier on Wednesday in a
referendum on whether to join the EU’s common defence policy 30 years after opting out.

The vote in the traditionally Eurosceptic Scandinavian country of 5.5 million people comes on the heels of neighbouring Finland’s and Sweden’s historic applications for NATO membership.

“I’m voting yes with all my heart,” Frederiksen said on Wednesday morning as she cast her ballot in Værløse on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

“Even if Denmark is a fantastic country — in my eyes the best country in the world — we are still a small country, and too small to stand alone in a very, very insecure world”, she said.

Turnout was projected to be relatively low in Denmark, a country that has often said “no” to greater EU integration, most recently in 2015. 

Polls opened across the country at 8am on Wednesday and closed at 8pm. 

By midday, more than 25 percent of voters had cast their ballots, according to a survey of polling stations conducted by Danish news agency Ritzau.

Until Wednesday’s referendum, the defence opt-out meant that the Scandinavian country, a founding member of NATO, did not participate in EU foreign policy where defence is concerned and did not contribute troops to EU military missions.

READ ALSO: Why does Denmark have four EU ‘opt-outs’ and what do they mean?

Denmark has been an EU member since 1973, but it put the brakes on transferring more power to Brussels in 1992 when 50.7 percent of Danes rejected the Maastricht Treaty, the EU’s founding treaty.

It needed to be ratified by all member states to enter into force. In order to persuade Danes to approve the treaty, Copenhagen negotiated a series of exemptions and Danes finally approved it the following year.

Since then, Denmark has remained outside the European single currency, the euro — which it rejected in a 2000 referendum — as well as the bloc’s common policies on justice and home affairs, and defence.

Copenhagen has exercised its opt-out 235 times in 29 years, according to a tally by the Europa think tank.

Frederiksen announced the referendum just two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and after having reached an agreement with a majority of parties in parliament.

Denmark has held eight previous referenda on EU issues, including in December 2015 when it voted “no” to strengthening its cooperation on police and security matters for fear of losing sovereignty over immigration.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Denmark joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

Denmark is one of 15 EU member states who have sent a joint letter to the European Commission demanding a further tightening of the bloc's asylum policy, which will make it easier to transfer undocumented migrants to third countries, such as Rwanda, including when they are rescued at sea.

Published: 16 May 2024 16:08 CEST
Denmark joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

The letter, sent to the European Commission on Thursday, comes less than a month before European Parliament elections, in which far-right anti-immigration parties are forecast to make gains.

The letter asks the European Union’s executive arm to “propose new ways and solutions to prevent irregular migration to Europe”.

The group includes Italy and Greece, which receive a substantial number of the people making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to reach the EU — many seeking to escape poverty, war or persecution, according to the International Organization for Migration.

They want the EU to toughen up its recently adopted asylum pact, which introduces tighter controls on those seeking to enter the 27-nation bloc.
That reform includes speedier vetting of people arriving without documents, new border detention centres and faster deportation for rejected asylum applicants.

The 15 proposed in their letter the introduction of “mechanisms… aimed at detecting, intercepting — or in cases of distress, rescuing — migrants on the high seas and bringing them to a predetermined place of safety in a partner country outside the EU, where durable solutions for those migrants could be found”.

They said it should be easier to send asylum seekers to third countries while their requests for protection are assessed.

They cited the example of a controversial deal that Italy has struck with non-EU Albania, under which Rome can send thousands of asylum seekers plucked from Italian waters to holding camps in the Balkan country until their cases are processed.

The concept in EU asylum law of what constitutes “safe third countries” should be reassessed, they continued.

Safe country debate

EU law stipulates that people arriving in the bloc without documents can be sent to a third country, where they could have requested asylum — so long as that country is deemed safe and the applicant has a genuine link with it.

That would exclude schemes like the divisive law passed by the UK, which has now left the EU, enabling London to refuse all irregular arrivals the right to request asylum and send them to Rwanda.

Rights groups accuse the African country — ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Kagame since the end of the 1994 genocide that killed around 800,000 people — of cracking down on free speech and political opposition.

The 15 nations said they wanted the EU to make deals with third countries along the main migration routes, citing the example of the arrangement it made with Turkey in 2016 to take in Syrian refugees from the war in their home country.

The letter was signed by Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania.

It was not signed by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has resisted EU plans to share out responsibility across the bloc for hosting asylum seekers, or to contribute to the costs of that plan.

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