Mette Frederiksen’s style of government has always been characterized by cool pragmatism. When the then-leader of the Danish Social Democrats began to copy the xenophobic asylum policy of the right-wing populist Dansk Folkeparti after the 2015 election defeat in order to bring her own party back to power, there were protests in the left camp, but her restrictive migration policy has now been accepted. But now Prime Minister Frederiksen has turned the Lutheran Church, all Danish bishops, the trade unions and hundreds of thousands of voters against her: On Tuesday, the Danish parliament decided with 95 votes to 68 to abolish the “Store Bededag”, one of the eleven public holidays – to to have more money for armament tasks.
The “Store Bededag” or “Great Day of Prayer”, which falls on the fourth Friday after Easter, was introduced in the late 17th century when several older days of fasting and prayer were merged. In most families, all that remains is the ritual of eating warm wheat rolls (“Varme Hveder”) with cardamom the night before, otherwise the day is considered a kind of institutionalized long weekend.
Religious feelings are unlikely to have been hurt by the holiday cancellation. For similar reasons, Germany abolished the day of repentance and prayer in 1993 in order to relieve companies because of the nursing care insurance that was newly introduced at the time
The unions called for a referendum
But when the Danish government announced for the first time in January that work should be carried out on this day in the future, a storm of indignation broke out. The churches were outraged that the abolition of the holiday was supposed to finance higher armaments spending. Several ministers emphasized that the money could also be used to finance things such as social assistance or the green energy transition. The unions called for a referendum and collected almost half a million signatures. On Tuesday this week, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the Christiansborg government seat. In consensus-seeking Denmark, this is almost like a popular uprising.
Why all that? NATO demands a defense budget of two percent of gross domestic product from its members. In 2022, Denmark came to just one percent with 27 billion crowns. Together with the abolition of the public holiday, Parliament decided on Tuesday to increase defense spending in order to be able to achieve the two percent target by 2030 instead of 2033 as originally planned. The Ministry of Economic Affairs calculated that the additional working day would bring around three billion Danish kroner (400 million euros) into the state coffers and that this measure would secure 8,500 full-time jobs. The ministry later reduced this number to 6,500. Both calculations are vehemently disputed by economists. Employees with a fixed salary should receive a salary supplement of 0.45 percent of the annual salary for the day.
Denmark needs reforms on the labor market, the health system is in trouble and then there is the major international crisis of inflation, the Ukraine war and energy policy uncertainty. After her election, Frederiksen promised “a million pieces of news that will surprise you all”. The abolition of the public holiday can be seen as the first innovation. At an economic conference on Wednesday, Frederiksen rejected everyone who had hoped that the holiday could perhaps be reintroduced in a few years. “There are all kinds of people who think we could work less,” she said. “Forget it, friends, just forget it.”