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WORKING IN DENMARK

Social Democratic plan ‘could attract’ foreign workers to Danish health sector

Policies aimed at addressing Denmark’s social and health care labour shortage include making the country a more attractive place to work for foreign professionals, a government minister told The Local on Friday.

Social Democratic plan ‘could attract’ foreign workers to Danish health sector
Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod commented on Denmark's plan to increase personnel numbers in the national health system during a briefing with foreign journalists on October 28th. File photo: Julien Warnand/EPA/Ritzau Scanpix

Attracting foreign professionals is a desired outcome of a government plan to increase wages in parts of the public sector, according to a senior minister.

The objective of the government policy is to “strengthen recruitment within our public healthcare system, where there’s a huge challenge,” Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told The Local at a press briefing.

“We would also, in a way, allow more people to come from outside to work as nurses or doctors in our healthcare system,” he said.

“But the problem is actually that we have the problem of maintaining [the number of] nurses in the public healthcare system,” he said.

As such, policies proposed by the government are designed to attract and retain public health staff through incentives which could also apply to foreign health professionals, he said.

“What we want to do is make sure it’s attractive enough to be in the public healthcare system,” he said.

The Danish government this week announced a major spending plan aimed at addressing a major labour shortage in public sector professions including health. The government wants to implement the plan if it remains in power after next week’s election.

Presenting the plan on Wednesday, the governing Social Democrats said they will set aside up to three billion kroner for potential health sector pay increases.

While they did not specify professional groups that would benefit most from the spending, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that there are problems in the “health sector, elderly care, preschool and prison service” and that money must be diverted to areas suffering from a shortage of staff.

READ ALSO: What is in Danish government’s plan for public sector pay?

“For Denmark, it is now one of the most important challenges if we want to continue to have high quality in our healthcare system,” Kofod said.

The last six months has seen more than 15,000 available positions in the social care or SOSU sector go unfilled nationally, according to government figures recently reported by broadcaster DR.

By 2030, Denmark will be short of 16,000 staff for social care jobs, according to the national organisation for municipalities, Kommunernes Landsforening (KL).

Rural municipality Lolland recently announced it had begun hiring staff from Spain, Italy and Hungary to address a local shortage of social care personnel.

Asked whether the government would like this hiring policy to be adopted more broadly, Kofod said that the incentive plan for health professionals was intended to address inequal access to healthcare between regions.

“We have about 600,000 people in Denmark today that are at risk of losing their family doctor because they live in rural areas outside the biggest cities where it’s very hard to have a family doctor because no [health personnel are] there. So we are ready to look at more incentives to put family doctors out in all parts of Denmark,” he said.

“Access to healthcare is very different. People living in the capital, for example: Their healthcare conditions are much better than the ones living in the rural areas, partly because access to healthcare is very different,” he said.

“So we have proposed a lot of ideas… including, also, recruiting from abroad,” he said.

Spending on public sector pay will be phased in from 2024 and would be subject to so-called tripartite negotiations with trade unions and employer representatives, according to the government plan.

The proposal is unusual because it appears to break with the established ‘Danish model’ for labour, whereby labour market representatives – trade unions and employers, including state employers like regional health boards – negotiate and agree on wages and other working terms through collective bargaining or overenskomster. This is normally done without political involvement.

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POLITICS

ANALYSIS: Is left-wing party’s EU election win good news for foreigners in Denmark?   

Denmark’s EU election returned a dream result for the Socialist People’s Party (SF), a centre-left opposition party. Could it have any long-term impact for foreigners who live in Denmark?

ANALYSIS: Is left-wing party’s EU election win good news for foreigners in Denmark?   

What happened in the election? 

Sunday’s EU elections can be considered a huge win for the Socialist People’s Party (SF).

The party reeived 17.4 percent of the vote, up 4.2 points from 2019, making it the largest Danish party in the EU parliament and giving it 3 of Denmark’s 15 seats.

It also means SF now has as many EU parliament seats as the goverining Social Democrats, who lost 5.9 points to end on 15.6 percent, with their mandate allocation staying at 3.

The two parties are closely aligned in domestic Danish politics, despite SF currently being in opposition and the Social Democrats being the senior partner in a tripartite coalition with the centre-right Liberals (Venstre) and centrist Moderates.

Like the Social Democrats, the Liberals also had a damaging evening. The party lost 8.8 points and is now Denmark’s third-largest in the EU on 14.7 percent and 2 seats – 2 fewer than it had in 2019. However, they remain the largest Danish right-wing party in the EU by some distance, seeing off any challenge from the libertarian Liberal Alliance (LA) along with the far right. 

The Moderates, meanwhile, took a single seat in the EU parliament for their lead candidate Stine Bosse with a 5.9 percent share in their first EU election.

READ ALSO: Four key takeaways from the EU elections in Denmark

What is the potential impact on domestic politics? 

Speaking on election night, SF leader Pia Olsen Dyhr said the party’s excellent result could be used as a “catalyst” for a new political landscape in Denmark.

The EU election result can fuel further gains for SF when the next general election comes around, Dyhr said in the midst of her party’s celebrations.

“There’s an alternative to this government. There’s an alternative that wants [more] welfare and [to do more for] the climate and we are willing to deliver this in the EU parliament,” she told broadcaster DR.

“It gives us a tailwind and enthusiasm for the party and it means people will be even more ready for local elections next year and the general election further ahead,” she said.

During a press briefing on Monday, chief political analyst at Think Tank Europe Christine Nissen said that the resounding result for SF could indeed have implications for future national elections.

“We won’t see any direct results or change in government right away but there’s no doubt that the power balances are reflected in such a result as yesterday because it was so significant,” Nissen said, highlighting in particular the poor outcome for the Social Democrats.

“I think that looking towards the next national election, the Social Democrats might well have a very strong party on the left. And this will also matter,” she said.

During Prime Minister Frederiksen’s first term between 2019 and 2022, the Social Democrats ruled as a minority government propped up by parties to its left – including SF.

Theoretically, this structure or a similar one could return but with a stronger and more influential SF, if that party can transfer its European vote return to a national one. Neither the Social Democrats nor SF have given any hint of this happening, it should be noted.

Would a more influential SF change anything for foreigners?

The answer to this question is speculative, but SF and Social Democrats are generally allies. SF says it favours a “sensible” approach to immigration and in practice agrees with the Social Democrats more often than not.

SF has, occasionally, set out areas on which it does not agree with Social Democratic policies.

This has included accepting quota refugees from the UN – a question on which the Social Democrats eventually changed stance and agreed with SF.

The smaller party has also advocated more accommodating rules for family reunification of refugees, and opposed some controversial policies such as the “Jewellery Law” which was supported by the Social Democrats (but proposed by the Liberals).

On broad issues such as citizenship and residency permits, SF has not often broken with the Social Democrats during Frederiksen’s time in office – so much so, that the party has been criticised by its own youth wing for taking too tough a line on immigration.

While other left-wing parties like the Red-Green Alliance and Social Liberals, for example, want to change citizenship rules to better accommodate Danish-born non-citizens, SF is yet to explicitly support this.

On work permits, the party sometimes votes against rule adjustments that make it easier to hire from abroad (as can be seen here), ostensibly because one of its core identities is as a workers’ party which protects Danish labour. 

It is therefore far from certain, if SF had many more seats in parliament than it does today, that the party would pursue a significantly changed approach on immigration and integration.

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