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Denmark set to permanently ease work permit rule as bill reaches parliament

A government bill to permanently change the minimum wage criteria in a key work permit scheme will receive its first treatment in parliament this week.

Published: 21 February 2023 11:17 CET
Denmark set to permanently ease work permit rule as bill reaches parliament
Denmark is set to implement a permanent reduction to the minimum wage criteria on its Pay Limit Scheme, opening the door for more recruitment of skilled foreign labour. Photo by Headway on Unsplash

The government says the bill, which will permanently reduce the minimum wage required under the Pay Limit Scheme (Beløbsordning), will make it easier for companies to recruit skilled workers from non-EU countries.

Danish businesses have urged for work permit rules to be eased so they can meet a labour shortage by recruiting workers from abroad.

“This is a wish that has been expressed by large parts of the Danish business community in recent years,” economy minister Troels Lund Poulsen told news wire Ritzau.

“With what we have now tabled, we are going to make a permanent arrangement which will thereby also give a framework for better conditions for Danish businesses which in a high number of areas are under pressure in relation to attracting and recruiting the necessary labour,” he said.

READ ALSO: What do we know about Denmark’s plans to relax work permit rules?

Low unemployment levels have resulted in business organisations, notably the Confederation of Danish Industry, repeatedly calling for more recruitment from abroad to be allowed.

Last year saw a majority in parliament pledge to support a proposal to reduce the Pay Limit scheme, an arrangement by which work permits are granted to non-EU nationals. The Pay Limit scheme allows work permits to be granted to applicants who have been offered a wage above a set amount by a Danish employer.

Under the old rules that minimum wage was 448,000 kroner per year. The agreement reduces it to 375,000 kroner per year.

The reduction was set to remain in place for an initial three-year period. However, the proposal was never passed into law because Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called an election before it was voted on in parliament.

The new government proposal makes the reduction to the Pay Limit minimum wage permanent, rather than introducing it on a temporary basis.

This is “first and foremost to give companies assurance that this will not be a ‘stop-and-go’ policy where there some rules that apply for a short period and then they’re gone again,” Poulsen said.

“Businesses now know what rules they need to follow,” he said.

“That makes it easier to make a recruitment process where you have a certainty about whether the people you are hiring can contribute positively to the company which is hiring them,” he said.

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

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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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