The Week That Was, December 7th – 13th 2020:

Coronavirus/ What happened last week:

Lockdown restrictions were imposed on 38 local authorities in and around Copenhagen, Odense, and Aarhus as the corona virus continues to gain strength – a further 31 municipalities were added at the end of the week.

The daily infection rate topped 3,000 but there’s hope ahead – a vaccine could be approved for use in Denmark by New Year’s Eve and a national vaccination programme would start soon after, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said. Jonas Egbert, Chief Medical Officer at Gentofte Hospital, said the health authorities are ready to start vaccinating people 48 hours after the first vaccine arrives in the country.

The positivity rate of those being tested is now around 2.80%, the highest since mass testing started.

Prince Christian, second in line to the Danish throne, tested positive for COVID-19.

Politics/Economy:

The government and its centre-left allies reached agreement on the 2021 budget including a raft of stimulus measures that, it’s claimed, will create up to 14,000 jobs next year. The government and a cross-party majority also agreed on tax reform aimed at securing a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions ahead of 2030.

A cross-party parliamentary majority agreed on the framework for an independent investigation commission to probe the minkgate scandal – a high court judge will lead the inquiry and witnesses, including cabinet ministers, will be legally required to attend and provide testimony under oath.

It was revealed that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen made a personal call to the head of the Danish Mink Breeders Association on November 7th and informed him that a mass cull of Denmark’s entire mink population was ’unavoidable’, even though the government’s own civil servants had known for days that the order to slaughter 17 million animals was illegal.

The Liberals (Venstre) would face a signficant loss if an election was held today – a new YouGov poll for tabloid daily BT showed the party, which was in power less than 18 months ago, would win only 14% of the vote if an election was held today.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was ranked 18th on American magazine Forbes’ annual list of the world’s most powerful women in politics.

Inflation increased in November by 0.5% compared to the previous month. Overall, inflation has now increased to 1.2% year on year – the highest level since January 2019 and markedly higher compared to the Euro area.

Foreign Affairs/EU:

A Russian national detained since July was charged with espionage – the unnamed person is suspected of passing on information about Danish energy technology to a Russian intelligence service.

Beijing accused Danish MPs who held meetings with pro-democracy Hong Kong activist Ted Hui in Copenhagen the previous week of ‘damaging Denmark´s image as a country that has always emphasised the rule of law.’

Denmark was ranked 6th om the latest Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), behind Sweden and the UK, 4th and 5th respectively –the top three spots were left empty to ‘symbolise the fact that no country was found to be doing enough to prevent dangerous climate change.’

Social Affairs:

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen offered an unreserved apology to 22 Greenlandic children who were removed from their families in 1951 and brought to Denmark to become ‘Danishised’.

There are fears that thousands of bloated, decomposing minks which last week were ‘rising from the grave’ may have contaminated Denmark’s ground water.

The health authorities ordered 700 chickens to be culled at a farm near Jelling after finding H5N8 bird flu, the latest in a series of outbreaks over the past month.

A new Gallup poll showed voters are divided on the thorny issue of whether the controversial Mohammed cartoons should be a part of the school curriculum – 42% said yes, 33% no, with 26% ‘don’t knows’.

Business:

It’s the business sector that will foot a great part of the bill for Denmark’s ambitious green transition policy – as part of the tax reform bill agreed by a cross-party majority, Tuesday, energy taxes and duties on companies will be raised to help the government meet its ambition of a 70% reduction on greenhouse gasses ahead of 2030.

The corona crisis hit both exports and imports in October – the latest Statistics Denmark figures showed exports fell by 6.3% year-on-year in October, following 5% growth in September.

The import of organic foodstuffs rose by 9% in 2019, from DKK4.4bn to DKK4.8bn (around $700-800m) – at the same time exports rose by 4% to DKK3bn ($420m), boosted by sales to Asian markets.

Industrial production dropped a seasonally adjusted 5.6 percent month-on-month in October, mainly due to weakness in the pharmaceutical industry.

American multinational tech giant Microsoft announced plans to build three new data centres in the Zealand region north of Copenhagen, ‘the most significant investment in its 30-year history in Denmark.’

Green energy company Ørsted signed an ‘historic deal’ with Amazon, which plans to source 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) projected an historic annual loss of $1.2 billion this year and more financial trouble in 2021.

Denmark has now experienced eight years of negative interest rates and there’s no reason to expect they’ll rise anytime soon, National Bank governor Lars Rohde said this week.

Six Danish nationals figured on this year’s Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, led by clothing magnate Anders Holch Povlsen, owner of the Bestseller chain, who has an estimated wealth of DKK53.2bn making him the world’s 254th richest person.

And That Was the Week That Was, December 7th – 13th 2020: To read all the above articles in full see: http://seven59.dk/archive (subscription required).