The EU Puts Denmark on Trial

Henrik of Europe News alerted me to this article from yesterday’s Jyllands-Posten, and our Danish correspondent Kepiblanc has kindly translated it on short notice. The Danish constitutional crisis is advancing at breakneck speed, and Kepiblanc has this to say about the situation:

Well, Baron, all this is revving up to a major crisis here with more and more people turning against PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his mismanagement of the whole affair. The Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) — on which his government is dependent — openly talks about throwing him under the bus, thereby triggering general elections. If so, a major landslide is expected. Now all political parties — save the insignificant “Radical Left”, and including the communist “Unity List” — favor “firm resistance” against the EU(SSR).

The Danish situation has one thing in common with the Norwegian asylum crisis outlined earlier today: inevitability. The immigration has to happen. It cannot be stopped. No one has any say in it. Everyone just has to accommodate himself to the new circumstances.

The difference, however, is that among the Danes a spirit of resistance is awakening, even if their own leaders are clueless.

Below is Kepiblanc’s translation of the J-P article:

Everything seems to indicate that the EU-Commission is preparing a trial against the last remaining barrier to family-reunifications in Denmark. Expert: Denmark’s chances are microscopic.

Denmark is breaking the EU common law by excluding certain groups from using the EU rules on family reunification. Or so believe the EU’s lawyers, according to an email from the European Commission’s Directorate General for justice, freedom and security.

The Directorate has accepted an accusation from the “Center for Documentation and Counselling on Racial Discrimination” (DRC). [Yes, we really have such a thing here in Denmark — translator]

According to an email the Directorate-General in December 2007 received comments from the EU’s legal service and then compiled a formal notice to Denmark, leaving only the final approval. A letter of formal notice is the first step in a case of breach of treaty, which, if appropriate, will attack on the only remaining Danish hurdle for people using EU legislation. Two others have already been overruled by the ECJ, most recently with the ruling in July that triggered the current crisis for Denmark’s immigration politics.

“The email seems to indicate that a formal notice is on its way”, says Peter Starup, an expert in European law at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU).

A lawsuit is on its way

- - - - - - - - -

EU regulations on free movement allow a circumvention of national immigration laws, thereby enabling EU citizens to bring spouses from non-EU countries back with them when returning from a short stay in another EU country. In 2004 Denmark decided to put a stop to the so-called “Swedish bypass” — in which Danish-foreign couples briefly moved to Sweden and then settled back in Denmark — by requiring that they had worked in Sweden prior to returning to Denmark.

Irrespective of the outcome of the European Commission’s deliberations, Denmark might stand trial in the case. The Organization “Marriage Without Borders” has decided to press legal action on the same rule. A Danish court will probably forward the case to the European Court of Justice because of its fundamental nature.

Denmark is in a bad position

Danish EU experts estimate that Denmark will have its interpretation of the rules annulled. Jens Vedsted-Hansen, a professor at the University of Århus and an expert on Danish and European immigration, says that the previous verdicts from the ECJ, and the fact that the EU according to recent interpretations in 2004 has assembled all the rules on freedom of movement in one single directive, place Denmark in a bad position.

Peter Starup of SDU calls Denmark’s chances of winning such a case “microscopic”. [SDU is the Danish version of UCLA in California — translator]

“Considering verdicts in similar cases, one has to conclude that the EU right to family reunification also applies here,” says Peter Starup.

This Wednesday it was impossible to contact EU-commissar Jacques Barrot as well as minister of integration, Birthe Roenn Hornbech.