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Denmark to reduce minimum salary for non-EU work permits

A majority in the Danish parliament will support a reduction to a minimum wage requirement on the Pay Limit Scheme, a criteria system used to grant work permits to non-EU nationals.

Published: 30 June 2022 09:22 CEST
Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen
Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen confirmed a reduction to the Pay Limit Scheme on Wednesday, broadening opportunities for foreign labour in Denmark. File photo: Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix

A majority of parties agreed on Wednesday evening to vote through a rule change that will see the minimum salary requirement on the Pay Limit Scheme reduced, the Ministry of Finance confirmed in a statement.

The agreement means that, as of December 1st, salaries at or above 375,000 kroner per year will qualify for the scheme. That represents a 16 percent decrease from the current pay limit of 448,000 kroner annually.

Based on today’s exchange rates, the new minimum Pay Limit Scheme salary is the equivalent of approximately $52,700 €50,400 or £43,400.

The lowered threshold will exist on a trial basis for the next three years. 

Political discussions over a change to the minimum salary rule have been ongoing for months, with most parties in agreement that the change was needed to address a labour shortage, but unable to come together over specifics.

“The Danish economy is in a strong position but we are currently experiencing increasing prices and a shortage of labour in Denmark. At the same time, we have set one of the world’s most ambitious climate goals,” Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen said in the statement.

“In that situation it is responsible economic politics to ease strain on the labour market for a while using foreign labour – provided this is in line with Danish salary and employment standards,” he said.

A reduction to the Pay Limit Scheme essentially means that Danish companies can now hire skilled foreign staff on contracts paying an annual salary of 375,000 kroner, and that the foreign employees can be granted work and residence permits on that basis.

Denmark grants work permits through the Pay Limit Scheme to foreigners who are offered high-paying jobs. There’s no education requirement and the scheme applies to all industries, as long as the annual salary requirement is met.

The Pay Limit Scheme is one of a number of business schemes used to grant work permits for non-EU and EEA nationals who are unable to move to Denmark under the EU’s right to free movement.

READ ALSO: How can you get a work permit in Denmark if you are not an EU national? 

The Confederation of Danish Industry (Dansk Industri, DI), an employers’ organisation which represents thousands of Danish businesses, said that the labour shortage was one of the biggest problems facing the economy and therefore welcomed the agreement, news wire Ritzau writes.

An umbrella organisation for trade unions, Fagbevægelsens Hovedorganisation (FH) criticised the deal in comments to Ritzau.

“Politicians are opening the gate to foreign labour on relatively low wages. That creates unnecessary pressure on wages at a time when there are already a record number of foreign workers on the Danish labour market,” FH chairperson Lizette Risgaard said.

New work permits cannot be granted under the new, temporary Pay Limit Scheme criteria “if gross unemployment exceeds 3.75 percent or if more than 15,000 people make use of it,” the finance ministry said in the statement.

Alongside the Social Democratic minority government, the Liberal (Venstre), Socialist People’s Party (SF), Social Liberal (Radikale Venstre), Conservative, Nye Borgerlige (“New Right”), Liberal Alliance and Christian Democrats have agreed to support the rule changes.

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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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