A ban on the flying of flags from countries other than Denmark may be lifted if the Radikale (R) gets its way.
Speaking to TV2 News yesterday, R's Zenia Stampe said it was about time Denmark ended the ban and allowed foreign flags to be raised here.
"Flags are merely a symbol,” Stampe said. "I love Denmark, I love our flag, but I also love the rest of the world."
Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of the anti-immigration Dansk Folkeparti, disagreed that flags other than the Danish ‘Dannebrog’ should be allowed.
“We have to respect the Dannebrog and only permit the Dannebrog to be flown on Danish flagpoles,” Kjærsgaard told TV2 News. “One should not be able to raise flags from Somalia, Pakistan or Turkey.”
While parties Socialistisk Folkeparti and Enhedslisten both support the proposal, 85 percent of people polled on the TV2 News website disagreed.
The negative response to the proposal led Stampe to write on Facebook that if she lived abroad, she would appreciate being able to raise the Dannebrog on her child’s birthday.
“Raising a flag is an expression, and I believe in the freedom of expression,” Stampe wrote. “And now I am being called a ‘Dane hater’? Oh, come on.”
The rules in Denmark for the flying of flags stipulate that only the Dannebrog is allowed to be flown in Denmark, although there are a few exceptions. Embassies of foreign countries may fly their own flags because the land that they are built on is not Danish but the property of the embassy's home country.
It is also legal to fly the flags of Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the EU and the UN without having to seek any special permission.
Permission can be granted to fly the flag of another country as long as a Danish flag of the same size is also flown with similar prominence to the foreign flag.
