Danish Anti-Peoples’ Party Madness in “Agurketid”

During the summer months, the media in Denmark often finds itself struggling to fill the newspapers, radio, and 24h news stations with substantial news and material, and not least to find viewers/readers/listeners. We call this “Agurketid” (The Cucumber Period). Of course, politicians know this, and The Danish Peoples’ Party (DF) has traditionally been brilliant at taking advantage of this temporary news drought.

This year, DF has suggested raising the so-called “24-year Rule” (age minimum for foreign spouses) to 28 years. Ignoring the obvious fact that the suggestion is pure provocation, and an excellent way of securing DF the media’s attention, let’s take the suggestion seriously for a moment.

The current 24-year rule was implemented in 2002 and designed to prevent the relatively high rates of forced marriages between some members of certain muslim communities (at least, that’s the official motivation). On the one hand, it was to prevent marriages with very young girls outside of Denmark. This obviously a malpractice which robs the young girl of her freedom to choose for herself, but from an integrationalist perspective, it also allows for the possibility of “importing” her family (family reunification laws), with the risk of a lack of integration incentive on the family’s behalf. On the other hand, it was to secure Danish muslims’ freedom to pursue a career and higher education – especially women.

Although some people point at a lack of evidence of whether the rule has in fact had the intended effect, the generally public impression is that it has, and most major political parties support the current 24-year minimum age.

The two obvious problems with the current system are:

1. It doesn’t prevent all forced marriages
2. It prevents legitimate marriages that aren’t forced at all, typically infringing on the freedoms of Danes who find love and happiness outside Denmark’s borders (see how this doesn’t affect DF voters?)

So, clearly, there are three possible solutions. Either we raise the bar to 28 years, preventing even more forced marriages (but also the legitimate ones), we retain the current legislation, or we indeed lower the limit to 21 years, adopting the common EU regulation.

It’s not difficult to foresee the eventual effect of the Danish Anti-Peoples’ Party Summer Madness: Status quo is maintained.

It’s not difficult to foresee the eventual effect of the Danish Anti-Peoples’ Party Summer Madness: Status quo is maintained. After all, all “sensible” parties would rather keep a 24-year limit than raise the minimum age for marriage to 28 (it doesn’t just sound ridiculous – it is ridiculous). And now that we’ve all discussed the prospects of changing the legislation, we can agree to just leave it be! – at least until after the next election…

This entry was supposed to be much more crude and rampant, but the fact that I am even writing about DF’s preposterous suggestion is doing them a favour they don’t deserve. They wanted a summer debate, they knew they were going to get it, and they got it. Congratulations, Denmark.