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RESIDENCY PERMITS

Do foreigners in Denmark have to carry their residence cards?

Foreign residents in Denmark who are granted residence permits are issued with a residence card or ‘opholdskort’. Who does this apply to and are they obliged to carry the card all the time?

Published: 31 January 2024 17:11 CET
Updated: 25 February 2024 08:54 CET
Do foreigners in Denmark have to carry their residence cards?
If you have a Danish 'opholdskort ' or residence card, remember to present it when you exit and re-enter Denmark. Photo: Chalabala/Getty Images

What is an opholdskort? 

Firstly, an opholdstilladelse or residence permit is required for legal residence in Denmark for anyone who is not a citizen of a Nordic country, Switzerland or an EU/EEA country.

The residence permit can be granted to those who want to work, study or live in Denmark, including those who come to the country as family members of other residents and as refugees.

The criteria you must fulfil to be granted a residence permit depend on the reason you are in Denmark and your personal situation.

READ ALSO: What’s the difference between temporary and permanent residency in Denmark?

If you are granted a residence permit for Denmark, you will be issued with a residence card or opholdskort, as documentation of your residence rights.

The card itself is a plastic card the size of a credit card and displays your photo. It also includes a chip containing your biometric data. You will be required to attend an appointment to submit biometric details to the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI), at one of the agency’s six locations in Denmark. The agency is then able to produce your residence card.

The opholdskort is distinct from the EU-opholdskort which is issued by Danish authorities to EU nationals who reside in Denmark for over six months under free EU movement rights.

So do I need to carry the card with me at all times? 

According to SIRI, yes you do.

The opholdskort is an internationally recognised document that proves your residence rights in Denmark.

As well as your biometric and personal information, the card also shows whether you have the right to work in Denmark, and you can therefore be asked to show it by an employer.

READ ALSO: Can you work on a Danish study permit?

You should keep it on you while in Denmark, but it is also important to take it with you when you leave the country. This ensures you will be registered correctly at border control when exiting and re-entering the country. Remember to present it along with your passport.

READ ALSO: Can you travel in and out of Denmark if you lose your residence card?

If you lose or destroy your residence card, you are required to apply for a new one and must pay a fee of 1,270 kroner, and you must also inform the police if the card has been lost.

Likewise, a change in your personal details (such as a name change) also means you must apply for a new card, although the fee is not applicable in these cases. Expired cards must also be renewed.

More details on replacing residence cards can be found on SIRI’s website.

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INTERVIEW

‘A noticeable change’: What Denmark’s plans to change family reunion rules mean

Olivia Scott, chair of the campaign group Marriage Without Borders, tells The Local that while the Danish government's plans to make it easier to bring a foreign spouse to the country are welcome, they don't go nearly far enough.

Published: 3 May 2024 17:12 CEST
'A noticeable change': What Denmark's plans to change family reunion rules mean

Scott, a Dane who is married to an American, told The Local that her organisation, Ægteskab Uden Grænser, had mixed views about the bill, which will give Danish international executives the same rights to bring a foreign wife to Denmark as foreign executives, halve the bank guarantee or bankgaranti those bringing a spouse to Denmark have to leave for their local municipality, and reduce language requirements for the Danish partner. 

“For some it will make a noticeable change,” she said of the bank guarantee change, “because it is going from being around 114,000 kroner to 57,000 kroner which is much more digestible, especially for younger people, so of course that’s welcome. But we just don’t think it should be there at all.”

As municipalities almost never draw funds from the deposits to support spouses who have come to Denmark, the system, she said, was actually costing them more in adminstration fees than they were gaining from it. “So it ends up becoming a cost for our municipalities and for our government, instead of serving the purpose it’s supposed to serve.” 

READ ALSO: What’s in the new law on bringing a foreign spouse to Denmark?

As for the plan to allow Danish executives returning to Denmark for work to bring a foreign wife and family under the same rules as apply to foreign executives, she said this followed a pattern in Denmark where only so called mønsterborgere, or “outstanding citizens” were welcome to bring spouses to the country. 

“Yes, there are some people that will benefit from this, and we’re always happy when there are regulations that change for the better,” she said. “But this is still just a small group.” 

Olivia Scott is chair of Marriage without Fronteirs. Photo: private

She said the attention being given to Danish executives in the bill simply served to emphasise the gap in the way regular Danes and “highly educated Danes with a lot of money” are seen by the government. 

“That this regulation is making it easier for highly educated individuals with good jobs, is, again, confirming this premise that it is only ‘outstanding citizens’ that we feel should be able to enjoy the ability to be family unified,” she said. 

The third part of the new law, which alters the language requirements for the Danish partner was, she said, welcome, as many Danes who wanted to bring a spouse to Denmark were being foreced to take a Danish exam to prove their ability to speak their own native language.  

“There has been a group of elderly gentleman that simply do not have the physical documentation that they passed their ninth grade. It’s called the afgangseksamen. It’s a physical document that they have lost over the last couple of decades, and so they have had to go and take a Danish test to certify their level of Danish, which is ridiculous because they’re Danish and they’ve lived and studying here their whole life.”

As for the final bit of the new bill, which will block spousal reunions if either the Dane or their partner has been charged or is under prosecution for a crime, Scott said Marriage without Borders supported the idea that someone who has been sentenced for comitting a hard crime is limited in their ability to get family reunification.

“But maybe there should be consideration paid to how long ago the crime was committed,” she said. 

In addition, she said, there was little evidence that foreign spouses tended to commit crimes, so the change would have little impact. 

“If you go and you look at statistics on foreign spouses family reunified with Danish citizens, the crime rate is lower in this specific group than it is among regular ethnic Danes.” 

Finally, she said that even if the bill represented a step forward, her organisation intended to keep pushing for additional relaxations of Denmark’s draconian family reunification rules. 

“Obviously, we hope that it’s going to go further, but we as an organisation are not going to be happy until the day when the rules for family reunion according to Danish law are equalised with those under EU law,” she said. “We cannot accept that the under EU law, you can come to the country as long as you can financially support yourself, and you can obtain permanent residency in five years, whereas for Danish laws, you are locked-into sometimes decades of struggles for no reason.” 

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