Today’s big topic: Denmark will once again become a black tax haven if Parliament cuts taxes on gasoline and diesel
What’s happening?
If the politicians in Folketinget decide to cut the tax on gasoline and, especially, diesel, as several parties have argued for during and after the electoral campaign, Denmark will once again become a tax haven with low levies on climate-damaging fossil fuels.
The proposals come even though a broad majority in Parliament decided in 2024 to raise the diesel tax by 50 øre (Danish cents) plus VAT per liter, because German hauliers and motorists were filling up on low-tax diesel in Denmark. That tax increase helped put Denmark, until this year, on track to meet its climate targets.
A cut to the EU minimum would shave 1.80 kroner off the price of a liter of diesel and 2.46 kroner off gasoline. Compared with keeping the tax unchanged, it would increase consumption, even though the price of diesel has risen by more than five kroner since Iran was hit by the first bomb on Feb. 28. As a result, Denmark would also have to buy a kind of climate quotas from other countries because it would be unable to meet its climate obligations, according to calculations from the green think tank Concito.
Why it matters!
Cutting the fuel taxes would also increase Denmark’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 2.4 million tons, Concito estimates. That is more than a tenth of Denmark’s 2030 climate target.
The higher diesel tax was originally introduced to prevent cross-border fueling, in which German hauliers in particular filled their trucks with low-tax Danish diesel. That pattern would return if Denmark cuts the diesel tax even more than it was raised a little over a year ago, Torsten Hasforth, chief economist at the green think tank Concito, said. Germans would also come to fill up their private cars, though to a lesser extent.
A number of European countries have already temporarily lowered their fuel taxes. They include Norway and Sweden. Sweden’s taxes, especially on gasoline, were already far lower than Denmark’s, and the Swedish government is pressing ahead with an application to the EU for permission to cut taxes even further, to below the minimum rate. In Denmark, it is Dansk Folkeparti (DF) leading the proposal, with support from Danmarksdemokraterne (DD) and Borgenes Parti (BP).
Still curious? Read the full article here.
In other news
–The pill war is now in full swing.
This week, the American company Eli Lilly launched a rival weight-loss pill to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy. An expert says the Danish drugmaker remains well positioned in the battle for Americans’ favor.
Eli Lilly has gone all in this week with the launch of its weight-loss pill Foundayo in the United States. Novo Nordisk, however, has a head start, since the company’s Wegovy pill was introduced back in January as the first weight-loss tablet on the American market. In total, several hundred thousand prescriptions for Wegovy have already been written in the United States, making it one of the most successful drug launches. At first glance, Novo Nordisk also has a distinct advantage over Eli Lilly. Senior analyst from Sydbank Søren Løntoft Hansen notes that »the Wegovy pill delivers weight loss on the order of nearly 17 percent, while Eli Lilly’s Foundayo pill leads to weight loss of around 12 percent«.
–Danes are waiting on billions in tax refunds – experts are puzzled
In the weekend before the general election, millions of Danes went online to check their annual tax assessment. There, millions of taxpayers could see that they are due a refund, but they will have to wait for the money. The refunds will not reach citizens’ bank accounts until late April. That strikes tax expert Henning Boye Hansen of the accounting firm BDO as a surprisingly long delay. »It ought to be easy to pay out the tax refund more quickly. By the end of April, nearly four months will have passed since the 2025 tax year ended, and this year you will earn no interest on the money you have ’lent’ the state by overpaying your taxes«, says Henning Boye Hansen.
– Oil traffic through Denmark hits historic highs
The volume of oil shipped through Danish waters has risen by 58 percent since 2021. In the first half of 2025, 4.9 million barrels of oil were transported each day through the Øresund and, especially, the Great Belt – the equivalent of 4.7 percent of global oil consumption. That is the same volume of oil that moves through the Suez Canal. European Union sanctions on Russian oil have forced Russia to send its crude to new buyers, particularly in China and India – and the route runs through the Great Belt and the Øresund. The surge is straining safety measures and raising the risk of devastating pollution, warnings say.
Talk of town: Tonight, a final decision will be made on what is to become of Palads
The Palads cinema dates to 1918. In 1989, its facade was decorated by the artists Aase and Poul Gernes. And it is precisely the facade that has been one of the central issues fueling the heated debate over Palads’ future.
After years of debate and back-and-forth, the future of the Palads cinema will finally be decided tonight by Copenhagen’s Committee for Climate, Technical and Environmental Affairs.
The committee is set to decide on the local development plan that would allow the cinema’s owner, Nordisk Film, to demolish most of the building and construct a new structure that would house both a cinema and a hotel.
Much of the debate over the cinema has centered on the facade, which was colorized and painted in 1989 by Aase and Poul Gernes. Today the multicolored facade is regarded as one of Gernes’s major works and, from the outset, was something that, for instance, several art historians strongly criticized the idea of leveling. In the current proposal, almost the entire facade would be preserved.
Others, with a stronger interest in cultural history, argue that the cinema as a whole should be preserved. It sits squarely along Copenhagen’s entertainment axis with the Circus Building and Tivoli and, when it was built, it was a cinema of unheard-of size and splendor, with more than 2,000 seats. Much of the original foyer still exists today, but a local plan cannot dictate what happens inside a privately owned building. That would require landmark protection, which the Danish Agency for Palaces and Culture has rejected on the grounds that Palads has been rebuilt many times since it was completed.
Most recently, the plan was put out for public consultation, prompting 3,128 submissions – a record that surpasses the number of responses to the highly contentious development on Amager Fælled and to the artificial island Lynetteholm off Copenhagen. Of the submissions, 12 argued in favor of carrying out the proposed project. The rest argued for preserving the cinema as it is, or opposed the proposal.
Read the full story here.
This newsletter features stories originally published in Danish. AI was used to shorten and translate the articles into English, after which a member of the editorial staff reviewed and refined the content.