Denmark is a kingdom in northern Europe whose territory includes Greenland, a self-governing Arctic island, with a population of about 6m, of whom roughly 1m are immigrants and their descendants. The prime minister is Mette Frederiksen. The monarch is King Frederik X.
After decades of semi-pacifism, Denmark became an eager military partner of America following the first Gulf war in 1990-91, when it sent a warship to enforce a UN blockade of Iraq. Deployments in the Balkans followed. After the September 11th attacks Danish expeditionary forces served alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, and later joined NATO air strikes on Libya. Denmark rarely applied the "national caveats" used by other allies to exempt their forces from the most dangerous missions, and lost more troops in Afghanistan as a share of its population than almost any other coalition member. Denmark has abandoned its legal opt-out from European Union defence co-operation. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, prime minister from 2001 to 2009 and later NATO secretary-general, was a key architect of this activist foreign policy.
More recently, Denmark has shifted from reliance on America's security umbrella to massive rearmament; defence spending should reach 3% of GDP in 2025. In 2023 the government decided to abolish "Great Prayer Day", a religious holiday on the fourth Friday after Easter, to help pay for the increase; tens of thousands protested, but Frederiksen was not deterred, and the holiday was cancelled in 2024. Denmark is also raising its retirement age to 70, Europe's highest. The kingdom is buying long-range missiles that can hit Russia.
Three-quarters of disabled people in Denmark are in work, compared with around half in Britain. Nearly 80% of Denmark's adult population work, several percentage points more than in Britain—one of the reasons the country has higher living standards.
In 2025 Denmark agreed to boost its spending on Arctic defence in response to Donald Trump's stated desire to acquire Greenland. In October 2025 it announced plans to spend $8.8bn on military equipment, not least for the Arctic, as European leaders and military units stepped up visits to Greenland—the aim being both to show America they take the Arctic seriously and to warn it off seizing the island. Frederiksen and Greenland's prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, agreed to band together in the face of what they called "disrespectful" American threats. King Frederik X visited Greenland to project solidarity, meeting hundreds of locals in Nuuk. Denmark summoned American diplomats twice in 2025 over reports of spying and running a covert influence campaign in Greenland. Denmark's military-intelligence service raised concerns about the United States in its annual threat assessment in December 2025.
After Trump threatened to acquire Greenland by military force in January 2026, Frederiksen warned that any such move would spell the end of NATO. On January 6th 2026 six European leaders issued a joint statement reaffirming Greenlandic and Danish sovereignty.
Denmark's foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has said that Denmark has not had "a Chinese warship in Greenland for a decade or so." In October 2025 Denmark announced plans to spend DKr27.4bn ($4.26bn) on Arctic ships, a patrol aircraft, radar systems, drones and a new military headquarters, plus DKr29bn for 16 additional F-35 jets from America. It is also strengthening its Arctic special-forces unit, which patrols Greenland's wilderness by dog-sled. Denmark has promised America almost free rein to bolster its own forces on the island. The Pituffik base is resupplied by a Canadian icebreaker.
On February 26th 2026 Mette Frederiksen called a snap election for March 24th. In local elections in November 2025 the Social Democrats had lost control of Copenhagen for the first time in a century. Polls in December put their support at just 17%, down from 28% at the 2022 national election. But since Frederiksen defied Donald Trump over Greenland, support rebounded to 22%. The election is watched closely across Europe, where centrist parties battle to contain the populist right. After the 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, and undercut support for the populists, whose vote share collapsed.
Denmark welcomed foreign workers and some refugees from the 1960s onwards. The tone shifted in the early 2000s and more sharply after an influx of Syrian asylum-seekers reached Europe in 2015. The Social Democrats adopted a hardline stance on immigration, arguing that migration's costs fall overwhelmingly on the poor. Authorities in 2015 threatened to seize asylum-seekers' assets to help pay for their support. Benefits were cut, and the prospect of recent arrivals bringing in family members was curtailed. Gaining permanent residency or citizenship takes longer than almost anywhere else, and refugees are afforded protection only as long as conflict in their home country rages, reviewed yearly in some cases. Somalis and Syrians once settled in Denmark have been asked to leave. In 2021 it was proposed that newcomers seeking asylum should be processed in Rwanda, a plan that fizzled. A law cracks down on "parallel societies"—estates housing many people with "non-Western backgrounds"—which can be razed or sold off if crime, unemployment or the non-Western resident share remain too high. The hardline turn has largely neutralised the Danish hard right, which polls only fifth.
Denmark's hardline asylum policies are cited as a model by Britain's Labour government, which referenced Denmark seven times in a November 2025 policy paper on asylum reform.
Denmark's record on migration is mixed: it has done a fine job of slashing asylum applications but a poor job of integrating immigrants. Natives are employed at substantially higher rates than immigrants or their descendants. The OECD's PISA education tests show that the children of migrants fare poorly in Denmark but well in Britain; indeed, migrants' children in Britain score higher in both maths and reading than native Danes. Like many European countries, Denmark opened its labour market to "guest workers" in the 1960s, implying that anyone who arrived was temporary, which set a different tone from Britain's Commonwealth immigration. Eva Singer of the Danish Refugee Council says the country sends mixed messages to refugees: parts of the state work hard to teach Danish and provide training, while the national government reminds refugees they are only in the country temporarily.
Denmark held the EU's rotating presidency in the second half of 2025, giving Frederiksen a megaphone for her approach.
Denmark will be the first NATO country to host Ukrainian weapons production on its territory. Fire Point, which makes Ukraine's long-range Flamingo cruise missile, plans to manufacture solid rocket fuel near a Danish air base.
In September 2025 drones were sighted above Copenhagen airport, Danish oilfields in the North Sea and around Danish and Swedish military bases. Defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen called the incursions a "hybrid attack" by "a professional actor". Britain, France, Germany and Sweden sent anti-drone equipment to Copenhagen in response. The European Union has accelerated plans for a "drone wall", formally known as "Eastern Flank Watch", an array of systems to detect, track and intercept drones along the eastern frontier.
PostNord, the state-owned mail service, ended its collection and delivery of letters on December 30th 2025, making Denmark the first European country to do so. Over the preceding 25 years the volume of letters had declined by 90%. A 2024 law ended Denmark's universal service obligation and scrapped the postal service's exemption from value-added tax, pushing the cost of a standard domestic letter to DKr29 ($4.50). Post boxes, which had adorned Danish streets since the mid-1800s, were progressively removed; a family in Frederiksberg that received 50 Christmas cards by post in 2023 received one in 2024. Danes can still send letters via DAO, a private company, but must visit a branch. In 2024 the United Nations ranked the digitisation of Denmark's public sector best in the world for the fourth consecutive year.
Copenhagen has become a European destination-wedding spot owing to its liberal marriage laws and speedy digital registration—only a passport is required. In 2024 the number of foreign couples marrying there rose to 5,400, more than double the 2019 figure. Since October 2025, 40% of city-hall ceremonies have been reserved for local couples.
For €200m over ten years, Kosovo agreed to house 300 Danish inmates in its Gjilan prison, reducing Danish occupancy from near-full to about 92%. Denmark is providing training to Kosovar prison guards and rebuilding the facility to Danish standards. The scheme is reserved for foreign-national prisoners.
We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.