The constitution retains a monarch, Queen Margrethe II, with mostly ceremonial duties. In a surprise announcement during her live television address on New Year’s Eve, Queen Margrethe said she would abdicate on January 14, 2024, 52 years after taking the throne. Her son, Crown Prince Frederik, would become king.

The monarch chooses the prime minister, usually the leader of the largest party or government coalition. Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was appointed by Queen Margrethe in June 2019, after that party emerged as Parliament’s largest in the election held that month. Frederiksen was reappointed prime minister in December 2022 after snap elections held in November.

The 179 members of Denmark’s unicameral Parliament (Folketinget) are elected to four-year terms through a system of modified proportional representation.

Frederiksen—who had headed an SDP–led government since 2019 with the support of the Red-Green Alliance, the Socialist People’s Party (SF), and the Social Liberal Party (SLP)—called for early elections in November 2022 amid ongoing fallout from the government’s November 2020 decision to order the culling of the Danish mink population due to the spread of COVID-19. Frederiksen’s center-left bloc won a one-seat majority in the snap parliamentary elections, but she resigned as prime minister the day after the election, announcing that she would work to form a left-right coalition government. In December, her efforts yielded a government comprising the SDP, the Liberal Party, and the newly formed Moderate party. The election was considered competitive and democratic by international monitors, and the results were accepted by stakeholders and the public.

Local elections held in November 2021 were competitive and well-administered.

Robust electoral laws are upheld impartially by the various bodies tasked with implementation.

Numerous political parties compete freely.

The Danish political system is open to the rise of opposition parties through elections.

Voters and political figures are generally free from undue influences by actors who are not democratically accountable.

The electoral laws guarantee universal suffrage for citizens, as well as representation in regional and municipal elections for permanent residents. Refugees and other immigrants may vote in municipal and regional but not general elections, after having obtained permanent residence at least three years before an election date. Women, LGBT+ people, people with disabilities, and members of ethnic and religious minority groups are represented in prominent positions.

The territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands each have two representatives in Parliament. They also have their own elected institutions, which have power over almost all areas of governance, except foreign and financial policy.

Denmark’s freely elected government is able to craft and implement policy. Governments most often control a minority of seats in Parliament, ruling with the aid of one or more supporting parties. Since 1909, no single party has held a majority of seats.

Anticorruption laws and bodies are generally effective, and corruption is not considered an urgent problem in Denmark. The government upholds a zero-tolerance policy for corruption and is subject to independent audits; those found in violation of anticorruption regulations face criminal prosecution.

Government operations are generally transparent. The Public Access to Information Act recognizes the right to request government information, though with some exceptions, such as information concerning national security and foreign policy.

Domestic media reflect a wide variety of political opinions and are frequently critical of the government.

Freedom of worship is legally protected. However, the Evangelical Lutheran Church is subsidized by the government as the official state religion. The faith is taught in public schools, though students may withdraw from religious classes with parental consent.

In 2018, a general ban on the public wearing of face coverings, widely referred to as a “burqa ban” applicable to Muslim women, took effect. Between 2018 and 2020, an average of 20 people a year were charged with violating the ban. In 2021, only two charges were filed under the law, and in 2022, only one. Fines for defying the ban range from $150 to $300.

In 2018, Parliament adopted a law requiring mandatory participation in a ceremony for confirmation of newly granted Danish citizenship, with guidelines including a requirement for shaking hands. The provision was viewed as a means of requiring Muslims who refuse to touch someone of a different gender on religious grounds to adopt practices seen as “Danish.” In February 2022, one person was denied citizenship for protesting the law by refusing to shake hands during the citizenship ceremony.

In December 2023, Parliament adopted an amendment to the penal code that criminalized “inappropriate treatment” of religious texts in public, in response to several burnings of the Quran in Denmark and Sweden earlier in the year that sparked anger in some Muslim nations. Filming and distributing a video of such an act was banned as well. Violators face a fine or up to two years in prison. Critics said that the ban was a restraint on freedom of speech.

Academic freedom is generally respected.

Private discussion is vibrant and unrestricted.

The constitution provides for freedom of assembly, which is upheld in practice.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate freely in Denmark, and frequently inform policy debates.

Workers are free to organize and bargain collectively.

The judiciary is independent. Judges are formally appointed by the monarch but are recommended by the Justice Minister in consultation with the independent Judicial Appointments Council.

Citizens enjoy full due-process rights. However, restrictions imposed especially on rejected asylum seekers remain in force. Individuals who were denied asylum in Denmark, but whom the government is for various reasons unable to deport, may be subject to administrative measures parallel to those imposed on people with criminal convictions. Many such individuals live in isolated centers with poor facilities where they are subject to travel restrictions and have no legal option to challenge their placement.

In April 2022, the Danish government signed a treaty with Kosovo to send convicted criminals who were due to be deported after their sentences to serve their time in a Kosovo prison. While the treaty has yet to be carried out, the UN Committee Against Torture in November 2023 raised several criticisms of the plan, including that it lacked sufficient guarantees that prison conditions in Kosovo would comply with international human rights obligations.

In September 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that Denmark had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in two cases of Afghans sentenced to deportation and reentry bans of 12 years after being found guilty of crimes. The court cited the complainants’ weak ties to Afghanistan and the lack of prior warning about the risk of deportation.

People in Denmark are generally free from violent crime and physical abuse by state authorities.

Discrimination, including based on gender identity or sexual orientation, is prohibited by law. In March 2023, Parliament adopted legislation that strengthened protections against sexual harassment in the workplace.

In November 2021 and March 2022 respectively, Parliament adopted special laws regarding refugees evacuated from Afghanistan and Ukraine. As of September 2023, almost 900 Afghan and approximately 39,380 Ukrainian refugees had been granted residency permits. The government and Parliament in late 2023 agreed to extend the laws and residency permits, with the Ukrainian permits extended by one year, to March 2025, and the Afghan permits extended by two years, to December 2025.

In recent years, controversy has arisen over the disproportionate number of people with non-Danish ethnic ancestry in the justice system. In March 2022, the Danish Institute of Human Rights released a report indicating that immigrants are more likely to be falsely accused of a crime than ethnic Danish people. The report cites data showing that first- and second-generation immigrants are 27 percent and 45 percent more likely, respectively, to be charged with a crime that ends in dropped charges or an acquittal than are ethnic Danish people.

In October 2019, Parliament adopted legislation that would allow the minister of immigration and integration to strip citizenship from individuals who fight abroad for extremist groups, namely the Islamic State (IS), without a court order; the minister only has the power to do so for those holding dual citizenship. Further, children born to Danish parents in conflict zones are no longer granted Danish citizenship at birth, and the Danish foreign service may deny fighters in foreign conflicts consular assistance. As of April 2022, 12 people considered to be “foreign fighters” had been stripped of their Danish citizenship. Seven of these have appealed the government’s decision; court proceedings in one such case ended in October 2022 when the Supreme Court confirmed an April High Court ruling that the decision to revoke citizenship was legal.

In October 2021, 14 out of 19 children with a claim to Danish citizenship who had been living at the Syrian al-Hol and al-Roj prison camps arrived back in Denmark with their mothers. The Danish government offered to retrieve the remaining five children but not their mothers, whom the government accused of association with IS and who had been stripped of their Danish citizenship; the offer was rejected by the mothers. The organization Repatriate the Children raised the issue in the Danish city courts in May 2022, suing the government on behalf of three of the children and two of the mothers. The trial concluded in December 2022 with a ruling in favor of the Danish state. In March 2023, the Supreme Court overturned a 2020 decision to strip a Danish-Iranian mother in the al-Roj camp of her Danish citizenship; the court found that the Ministry for Immigration and Integration failed to take “proportionality” into account in its decision, in accordance with the Citizenship Act.

In March 2022, ECtHR found the case Johansen v. Denmark—which concerned the deprivation of a dual citizen’s Danish citizenship following a conviction on terrorism charges—inadmissible because the complaint was “manifestly ill-founded.” The court highlighted “that it was legitimate for Contracting States to take a firm stand against terrorism, which in itself constituted a grave threat to human rights.”

Freedom of movement is protected by law and generally respected by the government. However, in 2018, the government, then headed by Lars Løkke Rasmussen, proposed an “antighetto” initiative, applicable to neighborhoods identified as having high unemployment and crime rates as well as a high percentage of residents designated to have “non-Western” origins. In June 2021, Parliament made changes to the regulations, expanding their reach to new neighborhoods. The revision, which replaces the term “ghetto” with “parallel society,” imposes tenancy restrictions based on education, income, ethnicity, and criminal record. In November 2022, the Danish Eastern High Court referred a case brought on behalf of a group of Danish residents affected by the initiatives to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The court will rule on whether the “antighetto” policies—particularly the tenancy quotas based on “non-Western” background—violate the European Union’s Race Equality Directive.

Since 2015, Denmark has enacted measures that restrict the movement of people who seek to join, or have joined, extremist groups abroad—notably IS. Some of the measures have been criticized for having a low evidentiary threshold or for lacking appropriate oversight mechanisms. In October 2022, the ECtHR ruled that Denmark did not violate the freedom of movement of a Dutch national sentenced to six months in prison for traveling to a restricted area in Syria to join a group fighting against IS.

Private business activity is free from undue influence by government officials or nonstate actors.

Refugees and other newcomers face lengthy waiting times for family reunification, including in cases involving small children, and restrictions on family reunification were tightened in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis.

In 1989, Denmark became the first country in the world to adopt same-sex civil unions, and in 2012, Parliament overwhelmingly passed same-sex marriage legislation enabling couples to wed in the Lutheran state church of their choosing.

Since December 2020, sex without explicit consent has been criminalized.

Public- and private-sector workers are generally free from exploitation by employers. The government and NGOs work, frequently in conjunction, to identify and prevent human trafficking and to provide aid to survivors.