Maybe the campaign has felt like a kind of respite from the many challenges that need to be dealt with in Danish society. If so, the politicians are in for a rude awakening from here on out.
We take a closer look here.
Missiles at Moscow?
If you think Denmark, after several years of defense spending on overdrive, is done making decisions about major investments, think again. True, the threats facing Denmark and our region have produced a high degree of consensus on defense and security policy, with a broad majority at unprecedented speed burning through billions of kroner on more fighter jets, ground-based air defense and many other investments. But the buildup of military power is far from over.
First and foremost, a new government must, at long last, decide to invest in new frigates. These are the Navy’s largest vessels, intended to play a key role in Denmark’s air defense. In the event of war, their weapons systems are meant to help ensure that enemy missiles can be shot down. But how many should we have? What kind? And should they be built wholly or partly in Denmark? Or bought in Britain, Germany or France?
All of that must be clarified even as a new government implements the decision to procure long-range precision weapons. The realization is that a shield is not enough. Over time it will be worn down unless you can strike back with a sword. One of the most intriguing questions is whether Denmark should acquire the extremely long-range Tomahawk missiles, which can reach all the way to Moscow.
Years of defense cutbacks will continue to cast a shadow. There is a huge digital backlog that risks hampering Denmark’s ability to defend itself and fight. As developments in the United States unfold, this will increasingly be tied to an uncomfortable question for Danish politicians: Can we still buy IT from the Americans, or do we need to make a fundamental strategic shift toward Europe?
Billions for schools
One issue has been completely dominant in the part of the campaign that has focused on education: the public primary and lower secondary school, folkeskolen. That makes it all the more interesting to see how many of the promises on schools make their way into a governing platform — and whether they lose their air along the way.
Five parties have each presented their own school plan during the campaign, and although they point in different directions, there is still some common ground. Most striking is a strong willingness to invest in schools. The parties have promised a permanent boost of anywhere from two to nearly seven billion kroner a year, plus a range of proposals for one-off investments, also in the billions.
Some parties want to spend most of the money on ensuring fewer students in each class, while others would rather prioritize two adults in the classroom. Whether you do one or the other — or perhaps a combination — it will create a need for more teachers. The big question, then, is how an incoming government will actually find the thousands of teachers the parties have talked about during the campaign.
Several parties have also focused on inclusion. A growing number of students today attend a special class or a special school, which is also absorbing an ever larger share of municipal school budgets. At the same time, there are families who find they cannot get the specialized placement their child needs because municipalities want to include more students.
No one has yet found a truly good solution. So even if there is a willingness to invest in better inclusion, it is immediately harder for politicians to figure out how to spend the money wisely.
A looming supply crisis
After what can feel like a long campaign, you might almost have forgotten it. But very soon, a straightforward financial lifeline will land in the NemKonto accounts of thousands of families with children, students and people on public benefits — namely the food check (fødevarechecken). And later this year, it must be decided how to cut the VAT on groceries.
Those agreements were stitched together in haste when, over the winter, the government finally realized that food prices are something Danes care about deeply. The government was in imminent danger of losing that issue entirely, above all to Dansk Folkeparti. And any incoming government is unlikely to repeat that mistake.
If you compare price increases with average wage growth in recent years, it does not actually look that bad for Danes, but the feeling that everything has become more expensive is strong among many consumers.
That is why the focus will be squarely on that. Most immediately, it is the price of gasoline and diesel that must be addressed. The war in the Middle East has sent fuel prices soaring in recent weeks. Last week, a liter of diesel topped 18 kroner, setting a record.
The possibility of cutting fuel taxes will loom over a new government. Sweden did it years ago, and several parties have said during the campaign that they would not rule it out.
The situation in the Middle East has the potential to turn into a supply crisis, and then an incoming government could suddenly find itself scrambling to soften the blow for consumers.
Work until 78?
The campaign has been full of talk about everything from a wealth tax to food vouchers, but one economic question is likely to be the most explosive for the next government: when—and how—Danes will be able to retire in the future.
Few decisions, if any, will have as much impact on the public finances, inequality and the working lives of Danes in the years ahead.
The biggest sticking point is the state pension age. Should it keep rising in step with life expectancy, rise more slowly—or be capped altogether?
Whatever the parties in the new government have signaled during the campaign, it will be an enormous task to carry out a change in practice. If the government wants to slow or stop the rise in the state pension age, it could drain the treasury in the coming years, in whole or in part, and the government will have to be crystal clear that other goals — such as tax cuts or welfare improvements — cannot then be funded.
If, on the other hand, the new government allows the pension age to keep rising as it does now, it faces the major task of explaining to the public that people can look forward to working until as old as 78 by the year 2100.
It may well be more emotionally charged issues that dominate public attention, such as a possible reintroduction of Great Prayer Day in one form or another. But pensions are the economic issue that could, in reality, become the heaviest and most important.
Pig farmers under pressure
Denmark’s conventional pig farmers are facing tough times. The left, in particular, but also Socialdemokratiet, Moderaterne and a few prominent voices on the center-right, want to improve conditions in Danish pig barns.
Few have talked about the price farmers will have to pay. It will be steep. Danish agriculture—which sends 17 million piglets abroad each year to be fattened and slaughters another 14 million pigs at home—competes ruthlessly on price. The more space the pigs are given, and the more bedding and other material they have to root around in, the more expensive production becomes—and the more farmers will go under.
How many will be forced to shut down if they are no longer allowed to dock piglets’ tails is not something politicians have spent much time considering yet. But a new government will have to. If pigs are not to bite each other’s tails, it requires not just far more space but also hay or straw to root around in. Many barns today simply cannot handle that.
A think tank has calculated that requiring just 50 percent more space would wipe out nearly one in three pig farmers, and it would take more than that to avoid tail docking.
Pig farmers have seen the writing on the wall. Just six months ago, Danish Crown floated the idea of producing another 10 million pigs. Now, instead, Danske Svineavlere is asking for a winding-down subsidy for farmers who want to get rid of their barns — a kind of mink package 2.0.
Even before the first pig has gotten so much as an extra square centimeter to move around in, the fight over who will pay the bill for better animal welfare has already begun.
More people need to be better off
Danes’ mental well-being — especially among children and young people — will be the next government’s painful headache.
Not only must it deal with the enormous rise in conditions such as ADHD and autism, but also the thousands of children and teenagers whose months-long, family-shattering absence from school must be addressed.
Far too many are not thriving in the lives they are living. They withdraw from communities, unable to cope with daily life.
But what is the solution?
There is no single pill or billion-kroner investment that will quickly pull people out of the isolating grip of poor mental well-being, which, left to itself, can develop into mental illness and serious conditions requiring treatment.
Most parties at Christiansborg acknowledge that folkeskolen does not only teach; it also strains children’s well-being, along with screens and, at times, inadequate parental engagement.
So something has to change.
Today there is no uniform, national, rapid help for children and young people in distress and with school refusal.
Desperate parents end up being tossed back and forth between their general practitioner, the municipality and the region. No one takes overall responsibility for the family’s crisis and the child’s best interests, which are parked on months-long waiting lists for psychiatric care — if they are not turned away outright for not being ill enough.
Child and adolescent psychiatry has, according to patient organizations, collapsed. An incoming government will have to revive it — by relieving it. Because psychiatry is rarely the right solution to social and well-being problems.
The outgoing government’s 10-year plan for psychiatry will work—in the long run. The next government needs to deliver solutions that help right now.
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