The Week That Was, September 4th – September 11th 2016
Politics/Economy
The government gave the National Tax Authority (SKAT) the go ahead to purchase confident tax details about Danish citizens contained in the so-called ‘Panama Papers’. Tax minister, Karsten Lauritzen, said he’s willing to pay up to DKK9m (£1m) for the information, which allegedly includes 12.7m documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca – leading criminal lawyer Poul Gudberg immediately reported the government to the police for receiving stolen goods.
A leading economist said there may be billions stashed away in foreign tax shelters but it’s ‘peanuts’ compared to the amount the Danish tax authorities miss out on every year on the underground economy in this country.
During a consultation with parliament’s Tax Committee, Tax Minister Karsten Lauritzen admitted the Tax Authority had received a tip off in June 2015 regarding the share dividend scam but was unable to prevent DKK12.3bn being illegally refunded.
The Liberal-led centre-right alliance would lose power if an election was held today – a new Voxmeter poll for Ritzau News indicated an 90-85 seat victory to the centre-left opposition if upcoming negotiations surrounding the government’s 2025 plan break down and the prime minister is forced to call a snap election.
The government is determined to bring the ‘blue bloc’ majority together on its 2025 economic plan published last week despite initial warnings from both the Danish People’s Party (DPP) and Liberal Alliance that they won’t support the tax cut proposals.
The Social Democrats strongly criticised the government’s ‘champagne reform’ that will give high earners tax cuts, but a new study by the right-leaning think-tank CEPOS showed the traditional workers’ party financed tax relief in 2012 by cutting social benefits.
Denmark’s industrial production expanded at the fastest pace in more than eight years in July,
Foreign Affairs/EU
Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen warned that Danish development aid in the future will be based on a ‘quid quo pro’ policy – only those countries that express a willingness to repatriate their own citizens will be eligible for aid.
Mr Løkke Rasmussen urged the EU to conclude the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States this year but acknowledged that protectionist policies touted by both U.S. presidential candidates will make a deal increasingly difficult.
The White House praised Denmark’s leadership of an international operation to rid Libya of its chemical weapons.
The Barents Observer reported Russia is pushing for bilateral talks with Denmark with the aim of signing a deal on a preliminary delimitation of the adjacent parts of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean.
Climate & Energy Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt said the government will follow in the footsteps of China and the USA by supporting ratification of the COP21 agreement finalised in Paris last December.
Justice Minister Søren Pind said the man accused of attempting to assassinate Islam critic Lars Hedegard three years ago is no longer in custody in Turkey so there’s no official extradition order but the Danish authorities are still determined to hunt him down.
The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, will spend DKK13m ($2m) from Denmark’s emergency fund to assist 100,000 displaced South Sudanese who have fled the war-torn country.
Bangladesh and Denmark agreed to continue working together in the areas of mutual interest including green growth, climate change, development and trade & investments.
Denmark’s foreign trade surplus increased to DKK 8.2bn in July from DKK 7.7bn the previous month.
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Social Affairs
The New York Times reported how ‘thousands of Muslim asylum seekers pouring into Denmark have provoked a backlash and raised questions as to whether the country has a latent racial hostility at its core’. The Danish people’s Party said any asylum seekers who arrive in Denmark with no ID should be placed in detention.
1.7m passports have been checked at the Danish-German border since January 4th when the government reinstated controls – over the same period 2,162 were denied entry and sent back to Germany, while 185 people were charged with human trafficking.
The government put forward a bill to ban minors under the age of 18 from getting married – Social and Home Affairs Minister Karen Ellemann said she’s ‘shocked’ that Denmark still approves child brides.
Christiania residents joined together to tear down all cannabis stalls on the notorious ‘Pusher Street’ in response to the recent police shooting – commentators characterised the move as a sign that residents have finally acknowledged Christiania’s liberal drugs culture has been taken over by organised crime. Police said there is no evidence to support the claim that last week’s shooting in Christiania was terror related, after the jihadist-linked Amaq news agency quoted an unnamed source, who said ‘the attacker was a soldier of the Islamic State (ISIS).
The Danish Cancer Society said youths in this country smoke at an alarming rate because of successive governments’ unwillingness to tackle the problem – new data from the National Institute of Public Health, published Wednesday, revealed that 40 minors under the age of 18 start smoking every day.
A high school in Denmark’s ‘second city’, Aarhus, was accused of practicing apartheid by segregating foreign students away from ‘ethnic’ Danes – out of seven ‘freshmen’ classes at the school, four consist of immigrants only while three are split 50/50 between Danes and ‘non-Danes’.
A nationwide ad campaign questioning the role of religion has encouraged thousands of people to leave the Church of Denmark (Folkekirken).
Business
A new report by the Confederation of Danish Industries (DI) claimed Danish companies have jobs available but are unable to find the manpower they need.
Pharmaceutical company Lundbeck was fined €93.8 million by the EU, Thursday, when a court ruled its payments to rivals to delay sales of generic copies of a blockbuster anti-depressant were anticompetitive.
Toy giant Lego reported a 1.8 percent decline in profit for the first half of the year as the company hired more workers and invested in China and Mexico – net income declined to 3.49 billion kroner ($523 million), even though sales increased by 11 percent.
Only 206 homes were repossessed nationally in August, the lowest level since the finance crisis hit Denmark eight years ago.
Fast-growing Norwegian Air is on course to overtake SAS as Scandinavia’s biggest airline – over the past 12 months Norwegian has flown 27.6m passengers, compared to SAS’s 28.5m, but analysts expect the gap to disappear over the next year as the budget airline continues to expand.
Cabinplant A/S, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of processing equipment for vegetables and fish, sold a majority share to US industrial giant CTB Inc. owned by one of the world’s wealthiest men, Warren Buffet.
And that was The Week That Was, September 4th – September 11th 2016 – To read all the above articles in full see: http://seven59.dk/archive (subscription required)