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EUROPEAN UNION

Danish businesses fear the worst as Johnson takes power in UK

Interest organizations representing Danish businesses have warned of the increased risk of a no-deal Brexit following Tuesday’s confirmation that Boris Johnson will be the new British prime minister.

Published: 23 July 2019 19:45 CEST
Danish businesses fear the worst as Johnson takes power in UK
File photo: Henning Bagger / BAG / Ritzau Scanpix

Johnson will take over from Theresa May on Wednesday after winning 66 percent of the votes of around 160,000 Conservative Party members in the party’s leadership contest, thereby becoming the UK’s new leader.

He faces the task of seeing through the country’s exit from the European Union and has promised a “do or die” approach to leaving on the current scheduled date of October 31st.

READ ALSO: 'He looks like a man who slept in his car': What is the Danish media saying about Boris Johnson?

Two Danish business confederations, the Danish Chamber of Commerce (Dansk Erhverv, DE) and the Confederation of Danish Industry (Dansk Industri, DI) have both said the risk of a ‘no-deal’ scenario and its potential consequences for Danish companies will increase with Johnson in power.

“I must say that the selection of Boris Johnson makes it quite likely that this will all end with a hard [no-deal, ed.] Brexit. That will be expensive for the United Kingdom and the British and will most certainly also hit the profit margins of many Danish companies,” DE CEO Brian Mikkelsen said via a written comment.

“But we can, of course, hope that Boris Johnson will be a little more pragmatic when he, as the new leader, is faced by the realities (of Brexit),” Mikkelsen added.

The UK is one of Denmark’s largest export markets, meaning the impact of increased levies and paperwork on goods and services exported across the North Sea could be felt on both sales and jobs in Denmark.

That is likely to happen should the UK leave the EU without securing a trade agreement with the EU, as would be the case in a no-deal Brexit.

“We hope the UK will not leave the EU on October 31st without a deal. A so-called no-deal Brexit would be a Halloween nightmare which, unfortunately, could come true,” DI’s deputy director Peter Thagesen said in a written comment.

“The Confederation of Danish Industry is advising its members to prepare for the worst,” Thagesen added.

According to DI figures, Danish companies received 86 billion kroner for exports to the UK last year. The organization estimates that 65,000 Danish jobs are connected to UK exports.
 

Member comments

  1. A ‘no-deal’ Brexit does not mean one without a trade agreement. It means without a transitional period agreed upon from both sides while a trade agreement is being negiotated. At this stage, the House of Commons has rejected the transitional phase (including the fact that Northern Ireland and therefore the whole UK stays in the customs union for as long as the negotiations continue) by not accepting Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement.

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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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