Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has announced that Denmark will no longer be accepting 1,000 asylum-seekers from other EU countries, as was previously pledged, DR reports.
Rasmussen told the Venstre party meeting in Herning that the volume of asylum-seekers otherwise making their way to the country precludes Denmark from taking its share of EU asylum-seeker quotas agreed in September.
The prime minister argues that conditions have changed so materially since the agreement was made that Denmark’s pledge is no longer applicable.
“When we agreed to contribute in that way it was because we needed to find a solution that was seen as the answer to everything: namely that if we could distribute the 160,000 then the problem would go away. But it hasn’t,” he said.
“A prerequisite for distributing them was that Greece and Italy had things under control, and they don’t. So you could say that they have distributed themselves. Therefore there will be no question of taking the 1,000 until the systems are up and running again.”
This development follows an upward revision by the government of the number of asylum-seekers expected in Denmark in the course of the next year, from 15,000 to 25,000.
