N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
Her euroscepticism has disappeared due to the Russian threat. Together with her Italian conservative, right-wing colleague, Giorgia Meloni, she wrote a letter criticising the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the court is making it difficult to deport convicted migrants, undermining the effectiveness of democratically elected governments.
At the opening of the Danish presidency of the EU Council in Aarhus, she said ‘People from outside the EU who commit serious crimes or do not respect our values should be deported’.
In a recent interview she was even more pointed, ‘It cannot be a human right to come here from Afghanistan and rape a young woman or murder someone.’ Denmark approved only 860 asylum applications in all of 2024.
Recognised refugees are encouraged to return voluntarily if conditions in their home countries allow it.
Since becoming chair of the Danish Social Democratic Party in 2015, Frederiksen has been pushing a hard line on migration. Her ‘un-left’ policies have made her popular in Denmark.
There is a good chance that her party will win the elections again next year and that she can succeed herself as prime minister. There are not many social democratic politicians who can say that today.
The Danish prime minister is not really a social democrat in the eyes of other social democratic leaders, for instance in Germany, France and Austria. For the Dutch ones is it anyhow too late to listen to her, former European Commissioner Timmermans let, in a shameless way, his social democratic party disappear in a left-green anti-Israel activist party.
