Denmark will hold a parliamentary election on March 24, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced on Thursday, as she seeks to capitalise on a surge in support for her defiant stance against US pressure over Greenland.
Ms Frederiksen has spent recent months rallying European leaders against US President Donald Trump's renewed interest in annexing the Arctic island, an effort that opinion polls suggest has bolstered her popularity after public dissatisfaction over rising living costs and pressures on welfare services.
“This will be a decisive election, because it will be in the next four years that we, as Danes and as Europeans, will really have to stand on our own feet,” she said. “We need to define our relationship with the United States and we must rearm to ensure peace on our continent.
“We must stick together in Europe and we must secure the future of the Danish commonwealth,” she said, referring to the kingdom which consists of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
High profile
The Greenland crisis has further raised Ms Frederiksen's profile on the international stage, where she gained attention for her swift response in navigating Denmark through the Covid-19 pandemic and for building European support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The election will test whether voters reward her international leadership and defence of Danish sovereignty, or punish her government for what critics say has been an inattention to domestic problems.
Ms Frederiksen triggered the vote seven months before a constitutional deadline in a bid for a third term as prime minister.
Although the dispute over control of Greenland is “by no means over, we have managed to get through it so far”, Ms Frederiksen said. She also reassured Danes that the government would work to manage the situation during the election campaign, holding international meetings when necessary “to safeguard the interests of the kingdom”.
Denmark's government is an unusual cross-partisan coalition of Ms Frederiksen's Social Democrats, the centre-right Liberal Party led by Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, and the Moderates, led by Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Foreign Minister who has twice served as prime minister.
No clear challenger
Created in 2022 as a crisis government, the coalition stands to lose its majority, according to opinion polls, as parties reposition themselves along more traditional left-right lines.
Ms Frederiksen first came to power in 2019 by steering her party towards a tougher stance on immigration to reclaim working-class voters who had drifted to the right. She looks set to secure another term in office, with no obvious challenger to form a governing majority. Denmark does not elect its prime minister directly – the post goes to the politician who can assemble a majority in parliament after a vote.
“Even if her party were to suffer a significant setback, it’s difficult to see an outcome of an upcoming election in which Mette Frederiksen does not end up as prime minister,” said Kasper Moller Hansen, professor of political science at University of Copenhagen, who studies voter behaviour, in an interview with Bloomberg.
Separately, the Faroe Islands, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, will hold a general election on March 26.
