Weekly political overview
From next year, you might not be able to drive in the winter with summer tires. A law proposed by the Transport Ministry will be debated in January. If it passes (which most likely will happen), it will be introduced in July 2025. The planned fines are around 1,000 DKK per tire if you drive with summer tires on snow.
Fireworks are only allowed on December 31 and January 1. Good news for pet owners, as the time around holidays usually means anti-anxiety medication for pets.
No bidders to build the new wind farms in the North Sea. Denmark wants to build three new, very large wind farms in the North Sea. Unfortunately, no company has applied to deliver the work. Why? There is no state support, and the cost of building has increased severely in the past years.
Ministry of Environment vs. the municipalities. By March 1, 2025, the municipalities must protect 2,671 areas around drinking water wells by enforcing a ban on spraying pesticides. Unfortunately, multiple municipalities do not plan to respect the deadline. Why? Within a short time, they need to establish voluntary agreements with farmers to provide compensation, which is more difficult than expected. The Ministry of Environment will initiate a lawsuit against the municipalities that do not respect the deadline.
Focus
The first citizenship interviews have been held by Parliament’s Citizenship Committee. The results? Two of the three applicants interviewed should be denied citizenship despite fulfilling all other conditions. At least according to the president of the committee from DF (Nationalist Conservative). What was discussed in the meetings? Fundamental values.
- More than 2,000 people are expecting to receive Danish citizenship when the bi-yearly citizenship law is voted on December 19. However, DF plans to submit an amendment to remove the two interviewed candidates from the list, as well as anyone who has ever received a fine. Chances for the amendment to pass are slim.
You can only obtain Danish citizenship by law, which means the Parliament needs to grant it. To obtain it, you need to pass the citizenship test, the Danish language test, to have lived in Denmark for nine years (with exceptions), to have been full-time employed in the past three years and a half, to not have public debt, to not have committed criminal offences, and to shake the hand of the mayor. There are usually two “citizenship laws” per year that contain specific names of the people that are proposed to receive citizenship.
