New EU ruling scraps 26-year exception to attachment rule

The law may negatively affect expatriate Danes who want to return to Denmark with their foreign-born spouses in tow

Shifa Rahaman

The Immigration Service has announced that the rules for bringing foreign spouses to Denmark have just been made stricter due to a new EU ruling.

Danes bringing home non-EU spouses will no longer be exempt from demonstrating that their attachment to Denmark is greater than their attachment to any other country if they have held Danish citizenship and lived in Denmark for over 26 years.

The EU ruling, which determined that the law was indirectly discriminatory, was welcomed by parliamentary members from Dansk Folkeparti.

Indirectly discriminatory … in more ways than one
Concerns have now been raised about how the law will affect those Danes who reside abroad but want to move back to the country with their foreign-born spouses in tow.

“We must not forget there are many Danes who work the world over as engineers, lawyers and industrialists – and many would like to come back home to Denmark,” Anne Marie Dalgaard, the general secretary at the organisation Danes Worldwide, told Metroxpress.

“They return with a know-how and network that Denmark needs. And if they can’t bring their foreign-born spouses back to Denmark, they will simply not come back.”

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