Spotlight on Denmark
June 28, 2002
The police presence is set to be unprecedented in a country not known for massive police action.
Each time ministers of the European Union gather in Denmark in the next six months, the country’s police will be out in full force. In Copenhagen alone, police expect to field 4,000 officers during meetings such as the European Commission visit on Monday and the EU heads of government meeting in December, which will close out Denmark's 6-month EU presidency.
About 65 percent of the population loves the fact their country is in the European Union, according to a recent poll. That remainder is not so excited, and police say some of Europe’s most aggressive anti-globalization and anti-EU activists call Denmark home.
EU go home
In 1993, when the Maastricht Treaty giving the EU greater powers took effect, Copenhagen fell victim to some of the worst street fighting in years. The outnumbered police officers shot 11 people.
Parts of the population in Denmark continued to kick and scream on the country’s path to full EU membership. An anti-EU group filed a lawsuit in Denmark’s highest court saying the country’s government handed over too much sovereignty with the Maastricht Treaty. The court ruled it hadn’t in 1998.
That same year, Denmark’s government waged a hard-fought battle with anti-EU activisits to win voter approval for EU expansion.
But that was then. Now, Denmark counts itself among the proudest members of the European Union. Though not a member of the euro-zone nations, polls show Danes are increasingly in favor of adopting the euro.
The Danes will get a chance to make EU history when they preside over the historic vote to welcome as many as 10 Eastern European and Baltic nations into the EU in 2004.
"Twelve years ago, the East Europeans freed themselves from Communism," the Minister President Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine last week. "Now we are obligated to keep our promise and bring them into our European family."
Bumps on the EU expansion road
That might not be as smooth as he hopes.
EU englargement is still hung up on a number of points that have left EU heads of states scrambling to correct before decision day at the end of this year.
The hangups deal with the old question of who will have to pay for the costly expansion and how much. Germany, among the largest contributors to the EU budget, says it will have to double its 9 billion annual contribution and is not happy with the idea.
That is among the reasons it has favored elimination or a reduction of the Union’s farm subsidies, which will increase with the addition of agriculture-intensive countries like Poland or the Czech Republic.
The accession of the southern, Greek half of the island of Cyprus is another expansion time bomb. Turkey, which occupies the northern half of the Mediterranean island is dead against Cyprus’ accession into the EU before Turkey and Greece work out a compromise on the status of the island, divided since 1974.
Putting Denmark on hold for the EU
Fogh Rasumussen told the Financial Times he is absolutely committed to getting the problems ironed out. The recently-elected conservative premier plans to spend 80 percent of his time on EU-related matters.
He has also completely booked a conference center for four days in December where he plans to keep EU leaders until they can strike an agreement.