Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen calls an election to take on the hard right again
Photograph: Getty Images
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E UROPE’S CENTRE-LEFT parties have much to thank Donald Trump for. His insults and bullying have made many of them more popular, notably Denmark’s ruling Social Democrats. On February 26th Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister, called a snap election, taking advantage of the bump in support she received after Mr Trump threatened to seize Greenland.
A few months ago Ms Frederiksen looked set for a drubbing. In local elections in November the Social Democrats lost control of Copenhagen, the capital, for the first time in a century. Polls in December put their support at just 17%, down from 28% at the national election in 2022. Since Ms Frederiksen defied Mr Trump over Greenland it has rebounded to 22%, and her net approval has bounced by 21 points.
Denmark’s general election on March 24th, and one in Sweden in September, will be watched closely across Europe, where centrist parties are battling to contain the populist right. The Nordic neighbours have test-driven different strategies for doing so. One is to adopt hard-line policies on immigration and crime in order to steal the populists’ thunder, as Denmark gradually has over the decades; Sweden eventually followed. The other is to give the populists a role in government in the hope that they will become more responsible, as Sweden did after its last election in 2022.
Both strategies entail ethical and electoral risks, but there may be no alternative. Europe’s efforts to isolate populist-right parties, as with France’s “cordon sanitaire” and Germany’s Brandmauer (“firewall”), are failing. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is France’s most popular party. The Alternative for Germany is tied for first nationally with the Christian Democrats, and may end up governing one of Germany’s states after elections this autumn.
For many in Scandinavia, even on the left, the lesson is clear. “Denmark is maybe the only country that has been, in the longer run, successful when it comes to weakening the right-wing populist party,” says Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s prime minister until 2022 and the leader of its Social Democrats, who are ahead in the polls with about 35%.
In the mid-2010s, a huge influx of migrants and refugees dominated northern Europe’s political agenda. After the populist anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party won 21% of the vote in 2015, a centre-right government introduced some of Europe’s toughest migration laws. These slashed the number of new asylum seekers from a peak of 21,000 in 2015 to around 3,000 two years later. They also undercut support for the populists, whose vote share collapsed. By 2019, when Ms Frederiksen took office, just 21% of Danes listed immigration and asylum among their top three priorities, according to YouGov. Still, her government tightened migration policies even further.
Sweden’s Social Democrats were slow to learn the lesson. After an influx of 156,000 people in 2015, the government cut the number of new arrivals to around 22,000 in each of the following two years. Yet it struggled to shift the perception that it had opened the borders. In a 2018 YouGov poll 76% of Swedes thought their government was handling migration badly, compared with 54% of Danes. In 2022 the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD) came second with 21% of the vote.
The SD had been shunned because of its neo-Nazi roots. But Ulf Kristersson, leader of the centre-right Moderates, struck a confidence-and-supply deal under which the SD backed his government in exchange for policy input, though it did not have ministers. The Moderates say democracy required giving the SD ’s voters a say. “Isolation hasn’t really worked anywhere,” says Alexandra Ivanov Hokmark, chief of staff to Mr Kristersson until 2023 and now at Timbro, a free-market think-tank.
Giving the SD a voice may have helped Mr Kristersson slow its growth; it is steady at around 21%. But legitimising the populists has been costly for two smaller parties in the coalition. They risk falling below the 4% threshold needed to enter parliament. Peter Hultqvist, a Social Democrat who served as defence minister, thinks this was inevitable: if a government includes populist parties, “step by step, it will be eaten up by the right-wing extremists.” The risk will be greater after the next election, since the SD says it will insist on ministerial posts.
The Nordic model raises questions for centrist parties elsewhere. One is whether adopting hardline anti-immigrant policies means abandoning core principles. Ms Andersson argues that stricter migration policies are needed so that governments can integrate those who have arrived, and implement social policies to reduce inequality. Another is whether they marginalise immigrants, making it harder for them to integrate. Then there is the question of whether countries with ageing populations can afford to slam their doors shut.
“We need nurses,” says Sedat Arif, a deputy mayor of Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city. About a third of its population was born abroad. Immigration “has to be regulated…[but] we also want people to feel part of the society”. It is a balance that voters do not seem ready to embrace. ■
논증 분석
유형: comparative
핵심 주장
포퓰리즘 우파를 억제하기 위해 북유럽 국가들이 채택한 두 가지 전략—이민 강경책 도입과 포퓰리스트의 정부 참여 허용—은 각각 윤리적·선거적 위험을 수반하지만, 유럽 중도 정당들에게 현실적인 대안으로 주목받고 있다.
논리구조
- 전제: 유럽 중도 정당들이 포퓰리즘 우파를 고립시키려는 전략(France의 ‘cordon sanitaire’, Germany의 ‘Brandmauer’)은 실패하고 있으며, Marine Le Pen의 National Rally와 Alternative for Germany는 오히려 지지율 1위를 기록 중이다.
- 진단: Denmark는 이민 강경책을 점진적으로 도입하는 전략을 채택했다. 2015년 Danish People’s Party가 21%를 득표한 이후 중도우파 정부가 유럽에서 가장 강력한 이민법을 도입해 신규 망명 신청자를 21,000명에서 약 3,000명으로 감축했고, 포퓰리스트 지지율은 붕괴했다.
- 논거: Mette Frederiksen의 Social Democrats 정부는 2019년 집권 후 이민 정책을 더욱 강화했으며, 이민·망명을 주요 의제로 꼽는 덴마크인 비율이 2019년 21%로 하락해 포퓰리스트의 핵심 이슈를 무력화했다.
- 진단: Sweden은 Denmark의 교훈을 뒤늦게 받아들였다. 2015년 156,000명 유입 이후 신규 입국자를 줄였으나 ‘국경 개방’ 인식을 불식하지 못했고, 2018년 YouGov 조사에서 스웨덴인의 76%가 정부의 이민 대처를 부정적으로 평가했다.
- 진단: Sweden은 2022년 선거 후 두 번째 전략을 채택했다. Ulf Kristersson의 Moderates가 반이민 정당 [Sweden Democrats]와 신임·공급 협약을 맺어 SD가 각료직 없이 정책에 영향력을 행사하도록 허용했다.
- 반론: SD의 정부 참여 허용은 SD의 성장을 21% 수준에서 억제하는 효과가 있었으나, 연립 내 소수 정당들이 의회 진입 기준인 4% 미달 위기에 처하는 등 중도 연합 자체를 잠식하는 부작용을 낳았다. Peter Hultqvist는 포퓰리스트를 정부에 포함시키면 ‘단계적으로 극우에 잠식된다’고 경고했다.
- 반론: 강경 이민 정책은 핵심 가치 포기, 이민자 사회통합 저해, 고령화 사회의 노동력 부족이라는 윤리적·실용적 한계를 내포한다. Malmo 부시장 Sedat Arif는 규제와 사회통합의 균형이 필요하다고 강조했다.
- 결론: Denmark의 사례는 이민 강경책이 장기적으로 포퓰리즘 우파를 약화시키는 데 상대적으로 성공적임을 보여주며, Sweden의 포퓰리스트 정부 참여 허용 전략은 단기적 억제 효과에도 불구하고 중도 연합 전체를 위협하는 더 큰 리스크를 안고 있다.
결론
포퓰리즘 우파를 억제하려는 북유럽의 두 전략 모두 상당한 대가를 치르며, 유럽 중도 정당들은 이민 강경책 채택과 포퓰리스트 포용 사이에서 윤리적·선거적 딜레마를 피하기 어렵다.
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