In 1998, Denmark was a constitutional monarchy with Queen Margrethe II as head of state. Located in Northern Europe, the country had a population of around 5 million people and the official language was Danish. The economy was largely based on services such as finance and banking, as well as manufacturing and tourism. Despite this, Denmark had one of the highest standards of living in the world, due to its strong welfare system and high-income taxes. Additionally, there were also some issues surrounding human rights in the country due to restrictions on freedom of speech and censorship laws which limited access to information. Furthermore, there were also concerns about aging infrastructure in the country due to underinvestment since the mid-1990s. Additionally, there were also worries about the effects of EU membership on economic development in Denmark. See dentistrymyth for Denmark in the year of 2015.
Yearbook 1998
Denmark. In February, Social Democratic Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen decided to announce new elections until March 11. The government had then had opinion success thanks to a prosperous economy, while the largest opposition parties were plagued by internal conflicts. But the government was having a hard time in the election campaign, where the opposition pleaded for freedom of choice in welfare and where the refugee issues came into focus. The choice was very smooth. Only when the Greenlandic and Faroese votes had been counted was it clear that the government had saved itself with an overweight mandate in the Parliament, 90–89. The decisive mandate in the Faroe Islands was won by only 176 votes.
With its xenophobic program, the Danish People’s Party made a successful choice, received 7.4% of the vote and entered the Folketing with 13 seats.
According to Countryaah, the capital of Denmark is Copenhagen. The election bourgeois prime ministerial candidate, Venstres Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, took the consequences of the defeat and resigned after 13 years as party leader. He was followed by his bourgeois colleague Per Stig Møller in the Conservative People’s Party. New party leaders became Anders Fogh Rasmussen for the Left and Pia Christmas Møller for the Conservative People’s Party.
Nyrup Rasmussen’s re-formed government became, as before, a coalition between the Social Democrats Social Democracy and the center party Radical Venstre, with support in the Folketing from the Socialist People’s Party and the Enhedslisten on the left. In April, the Supreme Court set the stage for a five-year legal battle over the legitimacy of Danish EU membership. Then Prime Minister Nyrup Rasmussen was acquitted of the accusation of having violated the Danish constitution when he signed the former EU constitution, the Maastricht Treaty.
In May, Denmark conducted a referendum on the new constitution, the Amsterdam Treaty. The Yes side then won by 55.1% against 44.9%. After the election, Nyrup Rasmussen promised the no-voters to work with heavy emphasis on bureaucracy and arrogance in the EU system.
In the autumn, a survey showed that the Danes were ready for the first time to accept a single European currency. However, the timing of the referendum on Danish membership in EMU is not yet determined.
About half a million LO employees went on strike in the spring in protest of the holiday and pension regulations offered by employers in a two-year pay agreement. Much of the country’s transport and distribution systems stopped, and schools and a large part of the health care system closed. Danmarks Nationalbank raised the interest rate to defend a declining krone exchange rate, which forced the government to intervene and, after ten days, end the conflict through compulsory legislation.
Unemployment continued to decline during the year. But the economic crisis in Norway, with its falling krone exchange rate, also created Danish concerns as Denmark exports for about SEK 20 billion annually. to Norway.
Political and Economic Crisis 1973-82
- Abbreviationfinder: What does DMK stand for in geography? Here, this 3 letter acronym refers to the country of Denmark.
The vote split the Social Democracy, and the day after the referendum, Jens Otto Krag surprisingly resigned as prime minister and left the post to Anker Jørgensen, who had been a staunch critic of the membership. Still, the party was plunged into deep political crisis, which broke through in the December 1973 election, with the party declining from 37.3 to 25.6% of voters.
However, the reaction to the development did not become a left-wing, although DKP probably came in the Folketing for the first time since 1960. Instead, a right reaction took place. The Progress Party, which was formed in 1973 by Mogens Glistrup and had the elimination of income tax as its brand case, got the election 15.9%, and the newly formed right-wing Social Democratic outburst party, the Center Democrats, which appealed to the homeowners got 7.8%.
Studies show that a large part of these votes came from the Social Democracy. After the election, a bourgeois minority government was formed with the Left (12.3%) as the ruling party under Poul Hartling. This government sought to unite the bourgeoisie on a stronger bourgeois policy that should not depend on the support of the Social Democracy and the LO. In other words, it was a termination of the class cooperation policy between the bourgeoisie and the social democratic movement. However, the trial was stranded. Partly because the divide in the bourgeois camp was too great, and partly because the working class turned strongly to these attempts to solve the problems at its expense. In May 1974, extensive work cuts and demonstrations took place against the government. In November, large parts of the working class were again mobilized, and thereby contributed to the decline of the government. A DKP-dominated group of trade unionists, the “Chairman’s Initiative”, played some role in this, but later showed its weakness and confusion over the income policies of the subsequent Social Democratic governments.
The Hartling government fell, and a new Social Democratic government under Anker Jørgensen was formed, gaining additional parliamentary strength in the February 1977. Election policy was resumed, but under more difficult conditions. The world crisis had already struck in 1972-73 and in Denmark had resulted in unemployment of 12-14% and galloping inflation, which put real wages under severe pressure.
The Social Democratic governments tried hard to resolve the crisis through income policy, which violated the trade union’s normal right to negotiate or act to the best possible agreements. This was first and foremost the August settlement in 1976, when the Folketing adopted a narrow wage framework before the collective bargaining, poorer price compensation, cuts in central government spending and large tax increases. This was followed up by the so-called stop settlement, which declared that wage increases achieved through actions such as the Labor Courthad declared unlawful, should be invalid. Unlike in the past, where restrictions on workers’ freedom of action or slowing down wages were usually supplemented by compensation for the broad strata of the population, the crisis policy in the 1970’s was characterized by a lack of compensation and clear attempts to pass the burdens on the crisis to the workers and other employees. At the same time, the industry received large direct and indirect subsidies from the state.
The government’s cut and income policy was followed by similar measures in the cultural and judicial field. Hate-like campaigns were carried out against groups in the education sector and children’s institutions, against the Danish Radio for alleged left-wing traffic, against the free city of Christiania being allowed to exist, etc. At the highest level, ideas were made to criminalize labor struggles and blockades were issued. of striking companies. It was also revealed that for a number of years the Defense Intelligence Service had been actively cooperating with semi-fascist groups on the far right, who had been used as spies and provocateurs in leftist movements (including the Hans Hetler case). Mexican Jaime Martinéz was expelled on charges that were hidden from the public. Tightening laws were made for use against certain lawyers in political matters. The development reflected that society and the political system were in crisis, not only economically, but also culturally and legally.
