00:00Denmark's Prime Minister is calling an election hoping to bolster her position following United States pressure over Greenland.
00:07Danish voters will now go to the polls on the 24th of March.
00:11Mehta Fredriksen is betting they'll reward her defence of sovereignty despite concerns over living costs and military spending.
00:20Well let's talk now to Rune Schmidtberger who's a political scientist at Aarhus University in Denmark.
00:26Rune, welcome to the programme. What's this election really going to be about?
00:33I think most of the agenda will be domestic issues. As you said, the cost of living, also social inequality.
00:42There will also be discussions about the government's proposal to expel more foreign criminals,
00:49even those that normally would be protected by the European Court of Human Rights.
00:54So it'll be mostly domestic issues, would be my expectation.
00:58So why bring the date forward for this election?
01:03Well I think as you said in your intro that now is probably the best time in the Prime Minister's
01:09view for her to score as many votes as possible.
01:12She and one of the coalition partners got a boost after January's round of talks about the US interest in
01:23Greenland
01:24and I think they're looking to capitalise on that and get as many votes out of it as possible.
01:30The election had to come no later than October 31st, so why not call it now?
01:37The next six months would be a de facto election campaign anyway.
01:42Friedrichsen said the conflict over Greenland is not over yet.
01:46I mean how do you see the relationship between Denmark and the United States evolve over the coming months?
01:54Well that would be very interesting and I think mainly up to the Americans.
01:58It would be very interesting to see if Donald Trump or anybody else from the American administration
02:03will make any major announcements during the campaign leading up to the election now in a little more than three
02:10weeks.
02:11That could potentially overturn things once again, but on the other hand if they remain silent
02:19and things stay in the diplomatic track as the Danish government has tried to keep them,
02:24then I think we'll see the domestic issues dominate.
02:29But in general of course the Danish-American relations have become much more uneasy than they used to be just
02:35a few years ago.
02:36Where do the polls stand now? Who's likely to win this?
02:40That's a very good question.
02:42The polls are pretty open in the sense that we traditionally had this red versus blue block system,
02:49but now for the past period here we've had this centrist government
02:53and the Prime Minister says she's open to forming a left-wing government or a new centrist government.
03:00So we really have to see on election night how the seats fall out to see which possibilities for forming
03:08a majority are available.
03:10But I think it's very difficult to say at this stage.
03:13Rune Stuberger, the political scientist at Aarhus University in Denmark, thank you very much.
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