The Danish Social Democratic government wants more justice in migration policy – its own and international. With this argument, in April it presented a controversial bill, which has now been passed by parliament by 70 to 24 votes. The measure was mainly supported by the right-wing parties, and the left-wing formations, as well as the UN, criticized the new law, Deutsche Welle writes.
According to him, after applying for asylum in Denmark, migrants will be transferred to a reception center in a non-EU country. Exceptions will be made only in rare cases, such as severe illness.
“We want to end the practice of Denmark and the EU spending huge sums to process the applications of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, half of whom are not even refugees. In addition, millions of people have no money to pay traffickers for their transfer to Europe.” , says Danish Minister for Foreigners and Integration Matthias Tesfay.
“People who don’t need protection at all”
In the future, Denmark will accept even fewer refugees than before. In 2020, it admitted only 1,500 people – many times less than at the peak of the refugee wave in 2015, when the country accepted 20,000 refugees. Recently, Minister Tesfay formulated the goal: “Soon no more refugees.”
“We spend a lot of money on people who don’t need protection at all. It’s crazy,” he said. “Finally, we extradite them – if we’re that lucky at all. Until then, they live in a repatriation center, where a person’s support costs 40,000 euros a year.”
The government has not yet said which non-EU country it has in mind as a suitable partner on the refugee issue. It will have to process asylum applications and then provide protection to those in need. All that is known is that talks have been held with Egypt, Tunisia, Rwanda, Ethiopia and several other countries, according to the Julands Post. Reception centers abroad will be funded by Denmark, but will be administered by the respective host country. If a refugee applicant’s application for asylum is rejected, he or she will have to leave the third country. If so, the asylum seeker will have the right to stay in the foreign country, but not to go to Denmark.
“This is the most radical change”
Among the critics of the new law is the left-liberal Danish party Radikale Venstre. Her integration spokesman, Christian Hegard, said the law did not change “the inhuman in our asylum system: that traffickers earn huge sums of money from people who risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean.” He added that the new measure would not stop people from trying.
Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and an expert on migration issues, believes it will be a long time before the new law comes into force, as there is no prospect of finding a partner country yet. But this law represents the most radical change in Denmark’s migration policy in many years, he added. “This legislative initiative is a much more radical measure than anything the Danish right-wing populists have proposed when they supported the country’s previous liberal-conservative government. The Social Democrats have surpassed them.”
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