Last Week in Denmark (16.10 - 23.10) Episode 36 Year 2

Lower gas prices; Tax advice; Start a company in 54 hours

Editor HQ

Opportunity: In collaboration with the European Training Center Copenhagen, we are offering you a cybersecurity course worth 50.000 DKK, in exchange for 16 hours of your life during the month of November. Held by a senior cybersecurity expert, the course will give you the basic understanding on how a hacker can gain access to your devices / data and what solutions low-cost are there for an entrepreneur and/or small/medium business. Sign up here until the 24th of October. 

• For who? Mainly entrepreneurs or people working or owning a small/medium business. However, any people interested are also welcomed. Previous IT knowledge is not required. 

• When? 4 modules of 4 hours every Saturday (from 9 to 13 o’clock) in November. 

• Module I (General terminology, CIA triad, anatomy of an attack, cybersecurity frameworks) - you will understand the tools that an attacker uses to get access to your devices and data. 

• Module II (Information security management - email & devices) - you will understand how to protect your email and devices. 

• Module III (Users & Identity protection, Application data protection, Business cybersecurity strategy) - you will understand the risks involved in giving others access to your data and how you can protect it. 

• Module IV (Business cybersecurity strategy, cybersecurity vendors, opportunities for funding to increase your security) - you will understand how to make a business cybersecurity strategy and how to update it, where to get protection solutions and how to apply for public funding that will increase your security.

• Participants in all four modules will receive a diploma at the end. 

• Method? Storytelling, explanations in plain English language, live lab simulations and interactive games. 

Call to action: If you think more internationals should be reading this newsletter, please consider becoming our ambassador for a day. Your role? Spread the word about us to fellow internationals and help them sign up. 

• If you have access to a printer and don’t mind taking some flyers with you, you can download the file from here. 

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Danish Politics HQ

8 days until Election Day! The day that will impact our next four years. The elections started with three candidates for the prime minister position (Mette Frederiksen from Socialdemokratiet, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen from Venstre and Søren Pape Poulsen from Konservative). After more than 2 weeks of campaign, Søren Pape Poulsen is almost out of the race (after multiple scandals) and a dark horse emerged (Borgen style), as the former prime minister and leader of Moderaterne, Lars Løkke Rasmussen is now a potential prime minister candidate. Nothing is set in stone and election night will bring us many surprises. After all, 45% of the voters are planning to vote for a different party (different from the one they voted for in 2019). 

Focus on elderly care: One of the most discussed topics during this election has been the current state of the elderly care and future challenges. 

• Although there is a need for more SOSU assistants and helpers (social and healthcare assistants), the focus from the “blue parties” has been on allowing the elderly to refuse a SOSU assistant/helper if they don’t feel safe around them. One of the candidates from Nye Borgerlige went so far as to say that the elderly can refuse a helper even if it is on discriminatory grounds, if the helper wears a scarf or is “Italian, gay or Jewish”. Due to public pressure, Venstre, Liberal Alliance, and Konservative changed their opinion and said that the elderly cannot discriminate against SOSU helpers. 

• Radikale Venstre wants to make it easier for people from outside the European Union to come to Denmark and work in elderly care, to solve the current employment crisis. 

• Konservative made a proposal for improving the current state of elderly care - public elderly homes should be run democratically by an elected local board that also contains representatives from the relatives; make it easier to identify bad workers and fire them; more unannounced supervisory visits; SOSU helpers should also get authorization to work in the field; elderly home leaders should transition from screens straight to the middle of the action; a private elderly home in every municipality; elderly homes should have a resident doctor. 

Focus on healthcare: Ranked as the most important topic for voters, there is pressure on the candidates to promise higher salaries for nurses and find solutions to recruit more nurses right now. The Danish Nurse Council has asked for a 5.000 DKK/month raise. 

• The association of surgeons wrote a letter to the politicians asking them to intervene as operations are canceled and postponed indefinitely; waiting lists are getting longer and the current hospital staff is being pressured by the amount of work into quitting. 

• They are asking for the removal of the treatment guarantee (which says that you are entitled to treatment for a maximum of 30 days regardless of what you suffer from). 

• 2.442 nurses have resigned in the last year from the public healthcare system. That is 5,7% of all nurses. 

The other kingmakers: Greenland and Faroe Islands, each has two mandates in the Danish Parliament. The four mandates can sometimes make the difference between the red and blue camps and decide the prime minister. 

• In Greenland, the two mandates are usually won by Siumut (sister party of Socialdemokratiet) and Inuit Ataqatigiit (a self-declared red party) - so the two mandates go towards Mette Frederiksen. 

• In the Faroe Islands, the two mandates are usually won by Javnaðarflokkurin (sister party of Socialdemokratiet) and Sambandspartiet (sister party of Venstre) - so one mandate for Mette Frederiksen and one for Jakob Ellemann-Jensen. 

Number of personal votes for the party leaders in 2019: Mette Frederiksen (A) 43489 votes; Lars Lokke Rasmussen (M) 40745 votes; Inger Støjberg (Æ) 28420 votes; Søren Pape Poulsen (C) 22223 votes; Pia Olsen Dyhr (F) 20047 votes; Jakob Ellemann-Jensen (V) 19388 votes; Pernille Vermund (D) 13391 votes; Sofie Carsten Nielsen (B) 8955 votes; Morten Messerschmidt (O) 7554 votes; Alex Vanopslagh (I) 3337 votes; Marianne Karlsmose (K) 2617 votes; Mai Villadsen (Ø) 2572 votes; Sikandar Siddique (FG) 2154 votes; Franciska Rosenkilde from Alternativet didn’t run in 2019. 

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The parliamentary elections 2022

Updates from the red parties 

Socialdemokratiet: Some voters say that Mette Frederiksen should smile more. Trade unions are not very thrilled by a red-blue government, so they sent a warning to Mette Frederiksen to not include Konservative into a potential government. Why? The Konservative are planning to make “yellow unions” (like Krifa and Det Faglige Hus) legitimate by allowing them to participate in the negotiations between employers and employees (25% in the latest poll). 

SF: They would like to make access to dentists and psychologists free. However, they are honest about not knowing where to take the 11 billion DKK needed (9,1% in the latest poll). 

Updates from the blue parties 

Venstre’s plan for the rural areas: They want doctors to move into areas outside of the city by providing them with financial incentives to do so (remove 20.000 DKK SU debt for every year spent in a rural area by a newly graduated doctor); the specialist doctors to be more evenly spread around Denmark; give the option for digital consultations with the doctor; better conditions for first-time house buyers; raise the tax deduction from renting out your summer house to 60.000 DKK; lower taxes on houses under 1 million DKK; (14,7% in latest poll) 

Konservative’s plan to reduce criminality: They want to introduce harsher punishments (50% more time given for violence and rape; 100% if they are at the second punishment; minimum 1-year prison for drugging other people; minimum 8 years prison if you kill someone while driving; up to 4 years prison for hit and run; up to 4 years for wearing a knife as a white weapon) and get more people to be hired as prison guards (7,7% in latest poll). 

• The association of prisons says that there is no more place in the prisons. So initiatives that bring more people to prison and keep them longer should be followed by massive investments in the prison system. 

• DD-Inger Støjberg welcomes the Konservative’s plan. DF likes the proposal but they feel there is not enough emphasis on sending home the criminal foreigners. Socialdemokratiet also welcomes the plan, but they think that there are not enough resources available to make it a reality. 

• Frie Grønne made a parody about people that feel unsafe going into the basement of their building to wash clothes because of foreigners. Watch here. 

Liberal Alliance: The party is positioning on a greener agenda, by supporting a potential CO2 tax. Unfortunately for them, the focus now is on their leader, Alex Vanopslagh and the scandal with getting a free apartment in Copenhagen despite not being qualified to do so (5,7% in latest poll). 

Nye Borgerlige: During an interview, Pernille Vermund said that they would like nuclear energy to be introduced in Denmark to avoid energy shortages in the future. How? Container ships with nuclear reactors placed around Denmark. Asked if she will respect her promise to only have 2 mandates in the Danish Parliament (basically making this one the last), she said that times have changed, and so did her intentions (3,9% in the latest poll).  

DD-Inger Støjberg: Dropped down to 7,4% in the opinion polls (from 10,3%). Inger’s anti-Copenhagen, anti-immigrants politics are not the main topics in this campaign and that is hurting their support as they are not presenting viable solutions to the current crises. 

DD-Inger Støjberg vs. Lars Løkke: There is no love between the two former Venstre leaders. They both started their own political parties on the basis of their personal popularity. Now, they made it clear that a future government cannot comprise both. They simply cannot work with each other. Nye Borgerlige and DF also stated that they cannot work with Lars Løkke. 

Updates from the center parties

Moderaterne: The party is currently in the middle of all discussions, as they position themselves as the king makers (their mandates will decide the prime minister), a fact also reflected in the sudden rise in the opinion polls. Pressured from both the red and blue side, to decide which sides he will pick, Lars Løkke said that a government without Socialdemokratiet is not possible. However, without saying whom as prime minister, he or Mette Frederiksen (9,2% in latest poll). 

Alternativet: The green party of Denmark is back. One of the latest polls shows them above the 2% line at 2,4%. In an interview, their leader said that they aim to reduce animal production in Denmark and stop investments in roads and artificial islands. One of their candidates supports legalization of marijuana as he boldly shows through his interactive poster here. 

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Danish Economy HQ

Good signal from the Danish industry: According to Dansk Industri, 50.000 more qualified people are needed in the Danish factories in the next 4 years. This year, 13.000 advertised positions have not been occupied. 

Fewer places in gymnasiums: The trade union, Dansk Metal, proposed a cap on the number of places in gymnasiums so that more young people take vocational education. 

The lack of SOSU assistants / helpers is forcing municipalities to recruit from abroad. Lolland municipality has already recruited 16 people from Spain, Italy and Hungary who are going to intensive Danish language courses until March 2023 when they hope to be able to start working. Lolland is looking for 74 more. The need in Denmark at the moment is 15,000 SOSU assistants and helpers. 

Good news about gas price: Denmark’s gas reserves are 100% full, while in the rest of Europe the gas reserves are at 92,6% ahead of the winter. The goal of 85% has been achieved. The price of gas is at its lowest in over a year (6 dkk / m3). It could go even lower in the following weeks. 

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Daily Life in Denmark HQ

Danish Tax System: Join this live Q&A with the Danish Tax Agency on the 8th of November (17:00 - 18:30). The Danish Tax System webinar consists of a prerecorded video and a live Q&A. In the prerecorded video the Danish Tax Agency gives you an introduction to the tax system. Here, you learn what your tax money is spent on, and how you pay the right amount of tax (in English). 

Halloween in North Denmark: Check out here what you can experience during Halloween. 

Start a company in 54 hours: Find a team, get mentorship, win prizes & start your company in 54 hours at Techstars Startup Weekend Aalborg. When? 11-13th of November Where? AAU Innovate Aalborg How much? 170 DKK for early birds. Prizes worth 30.000 DKK. 

International Day in Vesthimmerland: On International Day, it will be possible to experience inspiring presentations, take part in activities for the whole family, explore the many exciting stalls with career tips, activities in Vesthimmerland, cultural and leisure time activities and delicious tasting samples, among other things. When? The 17th of November (16 to 19 o'clock) Where? Messecenter Aars. 

Copenhagen Health Career Expo: Are you an international student or a recent graduate interested in pursuing a career in Life Science where you can set your skills and goals to the test? Then this event is the place to be! Deadline to sign up?!!! Today, the 23rd of October. 

Sport with Jelimir Vlastici

This week, The Fyn Arena in Odense is host to the Danish Badminton Open from 18 to 23rd of October and has a total prize of 750.000 USD. The reigning world and Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen entered Friday's quarter-finals with 40 wins in a row. But after just 30 minutes against the world number five, Singaporean Loh Kean Yew, that impressive streak has now stopped abruptly. The Dane lost in two sets in a match that was never really close. Axelsen's exit in the tournament means that there are no more Danes to be found in the tournament on Danish soil.