Foreign homeless threaten to take Denmark to European Court of Human Rights

Recent crackdown is unjust, argues Roma community in Copenhagen

Denmark’s crackdown on the foreign homeless has prompted the foreign homeless, primarily Romas, to entertain drastic measures as their frustration mounts.

A number of the foreign homeless who TV2 News interviewed said they were trying to gather evidence of Denmark’s tough stance on the foreign homeless in a bid to complain about the situation to the European Court of Human Rights.

“If they continue to terrorise us, we will complain about the situation to the European Court of Human Rights,” one foreign homeless person in Copenhagen, named Gabi, told TV2 News.

“All gypsys will send in complaints.”

READ MORE: Denmark gets tough on beggars

Tougher laws ahead
Since the government decided to take a harder stance on the foreign homeless issue, more people have been fined by the police for begging and expelled from Denmark.

The police has moved out a total of 45 times to clear up homeless camps, while about 200 people have been charged for being in the camps. Most were fined, while about 25 have been expelled because they’ve been stopped by the police several times.

“We aren’t doing well,” Armand Balutescu, a Roma from Romania, told TV2 News.

“We can no longer sleep on benches and in parks. We aren’t here because we are doing well. If we were doing fine in Romania, we wouldn’t come up here.”

The justice minister, Søren Pape Poulsen, recently announced that he intended to further toughen the law so that a zone ban could be expanded to include an entire municipality.





  • How internationals can benefit from joining trade unions

    How internationals can benefit from joining trade unions

    Being part of a trade union is a long-established norm for Danes. But many internationals do not join unions – instead enduring workers’ rights violations. Find out how joining a union could benefit you, and how to go about it.

  • Internationals in Denmark rarely join a trade union

    Internationals in Denmark rarely join a trade union

    Internationals are overrepresented in the lowest-paid fields of agriculture, transport, cleaning, hotels and restaurants, and construction – industries that classically lack collective agreements. A new analysis from the Workers’ Union’s Business Council suggests that internationals rarely join trade unions – but if they did, it would generate better industry standards.

  • Novo Nordisk overtakes LEGO as the most desirable future workplace amongst university students

    Novo Nordisk overtakes LEGO as the most desirable future workplace amongst university students

    The numbers are especially striking amongst the 3,477 business and economics students polled, of whom 31 percent elected Novo Nordisk as their favorite, compared with 20 percent last year.