Far-right Danish People’s Party leader Morten Messerschmidt insists that Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen should not proclaim the new king on Sunday, as is traditional, and that outgoing Queen Margrethe should make the announcement instead.
On Sunday, Queen Margrethe of Denmark will hand over the throne to Crown Prince Frederik, who will become the country’s sovereign as Frederik X. The 83-year-old Queen’s abdication, which she announced during her traditional New Year’s Eve address to the nation, came as a surprise after 52 years on the throne – an announcement that was quickly followed with controversy as Messerschmidt said Frederiksen should not proclaim the future king.
“It doesn’t have to be the prime minister, as it has been in the past, but Her Majesty herself who hands over power to the next Majesty. I think that would be a very nice thing,” Messerschmidt told the Danish press, adding that this is the first time in almost 900 years that a Danish monarch has abdicated.
However, Frederiksen has already said she would be responsible for the proclamation of the new King of Denmark, just as former prime minister Jens Otto Krag presented Queen Margrethe in 1972.
“The Prime Minister’s Office can state that it is in accordance with Danish tradition and state custom that the Prime Minister in office at any given time proclaims the change of the throne”, the office told Danish press, which the far-right leader found to be an unsatisfactory answer.
“I have a lot of respect for tradition. But we have to go back hundreds of years to the time before the last Danish monarch abdicated. So there are no real traditions in this context”, Messerschmidt said, admitting, however, that he does not know whether the Queen wants to do this.
However, the Danish People’s Party will have to look far and wide for support from other parties.
“I think you should do what the Queen and the Royal Family want, and I actually think it’s wrong for the Danish People’s Party to politicise the day. The beauty of our royal family is that it unites and is not political,” declared Pernille Vermund, leader of the national conservative New Right party.
The political spokesman for the Liberal Alliance, Sólbjørg Jakobsen, made the same point.
“Our party does not want to politicise the change of throne. It is up to the Queen and the Court to decide how and in what way this should be done”, he said.
Messerschmidt denied that he was politicising the debate precisely because he suggested that “politicians should be kept out of the process”.
According to Danish experts, there are no fixed rules about who should be in charge of proclaiming Denmark’s new monarch, as the whole process is rather a matter of etiquette, ceremony and protocol.
(Charles Szumski | Euractiv.com)
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