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Denmark’s King Frederik X tasked outgoing Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen with leading talks to form a new government on Wednesday, after her Social Democrats scraped through a general election without securing a majority.<\/p>\n
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Danes are braced for a weeks-long coalition-building process as Frederiksen seeks to consolidate power in the deeply splintered parliament after Tuesday’s vote.<\/p>\n
A left-wing bloc of five parties, including Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, won 84 seats, while the right-wing and far-right claimed 77.<\/p>\n
With neither side securing a majority, veteran politician Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen has emerged as kingmaker, with his Moderates securing 14 seats.<\/p>\n
After meeting with all party leaders, Denmark’s king on Wednesday “requested acting Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to lead negotiations on the formation of a government with the participation of the socialist Green Left and the Danish Social Liberal Party,” the royal court said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Social Democrats posted their worst election score since 1903, though they remained Denmark’s largest single party, with 38 seats in the 179-seat parliament.<\/p>\n
Frederiksen formally tendered her coalition government’s resignation to King Frederik on Wednesday, telling a televised party leader debate she wanted to try to form a centre-left government.<\/p>\n
“The most realistic scenario” would be a coalition with the five parties on the left and the centre-right Moderates, she said.<\/p>\n
But it is not certain that the Moderates, led by Foreign Minister L\u00f8kke Rasmussen, would agree to that.<\/p>\n
“I don’t believe that Denmark needs policies aligned with” the leftist Red-Green Alliance, he said.<\/p>\n
Even so, Aarhus University political science professor Rune Stubager told reporters that his “expectation is that Mette Frederiksen will become prime minister”.<\/p>\n
“But I don’t know with the backing of which parties, like the left wing or the right wing,” he said.<\/p>\n
He noted that Rasmussen, a two-time former prime minister, would likely vie for the position of prime minister, even though he has adamantly denied any interest in the job.<\/p>\n
“Danes want me and not another prime minister. I still have the backing to be able to continue on behalf of the Danish people,” Frederiksen insisted during the debate.<\/p>\n
Frederiksen has for the past four years headed an unprecedented left-right coalition made up of her Social Democrats, the Moderates and the Liberals.<\/p>\n
The Liberals have refused to continue in a Social Democrat-led government.<\/p>\n
‘Too hard to say’<\/p>\n
Danes are now prepared for long negotiations. After the 2022 election, talks lasted six weeks.<\/p>\n
“It’s really too hard to say who will be part of the coalition,” admitted Stubager.<\/p>\n
With 12 parties in parliament, the political landscape is jagged, though Denmark is accustomed to minority governments.<\/p>\n
“To some extent, this is the way Danish politics works. You have a minority government in the centre which forms a majority with the left on some issues and with the right on others,” he explained.<\/p>\n
The negotiations are expected to focus on economic and pension issues, pollution and immigration, he said.<\/p>\n
The traditional far-right party, the Danish People’s Party, which has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s but slumped in the 2022 election, more than tripled its result to 9.1%.<\/p>\n
The three anti-immigration groups together garnered 17%, a stable figure for Denmark’s populist right over the past two decades.<\/p>\n
“If negotiations take place in the left-wing bloc with the Moderates, then there will be more focus on green issues than on immigration,” Stubager said.<\/p>\n
“But if instead the Moderates negotiate with the parties on the right, then the central issue will be immigration.”<\/p>\n
Four seats in Denmark’s parliament are held by its two autonomous territories; two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands.<\/p>\n
While the Faroese renewed the mandates of the two outgoing lawmakers, with one for each bloc, Greenland overwhelmingly backed the left-wing party and Naleraq, which advocates rapid independence from Denmark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denmark’s King Frederik X tasked outgoing Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen with leading talks to form a new government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4082,27,26,26552,43,57,3396],"class_list":["post-48647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-coalition","tag-danmark","tag-denmark","tag-denmark-politics","tag-faroe-islands","tag-greenland","tag-mette-frederiksen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116292413396427321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}