(Note: This is the post that was postponed by the breaking Solvang Pride controversy last week. Mayor Mark Infanti switched sides, and the compromise reapplication by Rainbow House Inc.—eight banners, no crosswalks—passed, much to the continued consternation of dissenting councilman Robert Clarke, who insisted he is “not a bad person.”)
Denmark has enjoyed a favorable reputation in mainstream American media, which leans to the left (the “liberal” side in US political parlance). Its safety net, work-life balance, collective traffic system, unionization, environmentalism, and gender egalitarianism and tolerance are all traits that American progressives view with envy. But in recent weeks, three prominent publications—Washington Post, Time, and Wired—have run articles critical of Denmark. They aren’t exactly revelations, but taken together, they paint a picture of a forward-thinking country drifting away from some of its professed principles.
The Post piece—"How progressive Denmark became the face of the anti-migration left”—is hardly a scoop. The country has been criticized many times over by the EU, the UN, and others for its stringent immigration and refugee policies even before the infamous Jewelry Law was enacted to stem the flood of migrants in 2015.
Safe spaces in the rubble
The story focuses on the revocation of temporary residence permits for Syrian refugees on the basis of a disputed judgment that it is now safe for them to return to Damascus and other regions. It portrays the government, led by the Social Democrats, as hopping on and sanitizing the wave of populist nationalism in Europe. According to Nadia Hardman of Human Rights Watch, the policy is “racist, duplicitous and hypocritical.”
Since Denmark doesn’t recognize the Syrian government, it can’t actually send the ejected refugees back or force them to leave. They are therefore confined indefinitely to a deportation center like the former prison at Kaershovedgaard and live in a demoralizing limbo. Many of the individual decisions have been reversed upon appeal. Critics also note that last year the government made an exception to its “zero” refugee policy (outside the UN quota system) for Ukrainians, apparently on the reasoning that as fellow Europeans they can be integrated more easily than Arab and African refugees.
Fish will die and toxic algae will bloom
The Time article—" How an Artificial Island in Denmark Became One of Europe's Most Controversial Climate Projects”—examines the Lynetteholm construction project, which I have also written about earlier. It’s actually intended to be a peninsula, not an island, that will protect Copenhagen harbor against rising sea levels as well as provide new housing units.
Environmentalist groups argue that the land reclamation will interfere with ocean currents in the Øresund, the strait between Denmark and Sweden, causing desalinization and adverse effects on marine life in the Baltic Sea. They say the construction project itself and a new highway running through the area will increase pollution, and residents object to the disturbance from the transportation of hundreds of tons of construction debris in hundreds of truckloads to the site.
Ocean view of storm surges
The company formed to manage the project, By & Havn, and the government have answered that the desalinization effect will be insignificant, new housing units are urgently needed, the new highway will redirect traffic around the city, and the trucks depositing the construction debris will be electric. The Danish Climate Movement counters that the real motive behind the project, or at least the decisive factor, is real estate development in the new district and that the 35,000 new homes at luxury waterfront locations won’t remedy the shortage of affordable housing in Copenhagen. It has now filed an injunction against the project.
Loopholes in the safety net
Not to be outdone at clickbait, Wired magazine offers “How Denmark’s Welfare State Became a Surveillance Nightmare.” The article describes the country’s system for monitoring social benefits as morphing into something unnecessarily extensive and invasive. With access to nine state databases and several machine learning models, it collects information on topics ranging from taxes and employment to travel and relationships. “I’m here to catch cheaters,” says Annika Jacobsen, the head of the Public Benefits Administration.
Critics say the effort is disproportionate to the problem: Welfare fraud is not as prevalent as suggested by a 2013 Deloitte study that was used to justify an expansion of the system. And according to the Danish Institute for Human Rights and other organizations, it violates citizens’ privacy rights. Other European countries have adopted similar systems. In 2021, errors caused by ethnic profiling brought down the Dutch government, and critics of the Danish system see its use of information on nationality and foreign travel as a similar form of ethnic profiling.
Big data v. the little people
Jacobsen explains that the cases flagged by the system are always evaluated by a human fraud investigator. In 2022, 8 percent of the cases resulted in fines and recovered EUR 23.1 million ($25 million) on a budget of EUR 3.1 million. While she maintains that it’s better than asking citizens to rat on their neighbors, some investigators consider the system little better than the old practice of following up on tips from social workers and teachers.
What the three stories have in common is an implication that Denmark is bending the rules, or taking advantage of technologies in areas where the rules are not yet clearly defined, at the expense of the least powerful in society (and in the Baltic depths).
But the property market is safe
But not all the recent American news on Denmark is negative, however. “In Praise of the Danish Mortgage System,” by Alex Tabarrok of the influential Marginal Revolution blog, extols the flexibility and stability of the match-funding mortgage-loan principle. This isn’t really news, though; the system has been operating since 1797 without a single default.
Don't forget the fact the government doesn't have to follow the law. For example, the closing of big nature areas with high fences, call it natur national park, fill it up with horses and cows and don't feed them anymore. Iow, don't give a shit about dyrevelfærdsloven which states you are not allowed to leave your animals in an enclosed environment without water and food. But the government is apparently allowed to do just that.