The High Court of Eastern Denmark has decided this week that it is the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that decides whether the criteria provided for in the legislation of what is known as the Danish old ghetto law discriminate against the inhabitants of the Mjolnerparken neighborhood, from Copenhagen, because of their ethnic origin.
A group of residents forced to vacate their homes in Mjølnerparken, a neighborhood classified by the Danish government as a "hard ghetto", filed a lawsuit against the Danish Ministry of the Interior and Housing. Along with the Danish Institute for Human Rights and two UN-appointed human rights experts, the residents are calling for the CJEU to rule in their favor by appealing to the European Union's Racial Equality Directive.
“This provides the Luxembourg Court with a valuable opportunity to help address contemporary forms of racism by clarifying that it is not possible for Denmark or other European countries to try to evade responsibility for racial or ethnic discrimination by using codified wording,” he said. Susheela Math, senior litigation officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative, in a press release.
“The criteria that the Danish legislation applies to designate certain areas as ghettos are based, mainly, on the racial and ethnic origin of the citizens and on their economic problems, in a way that violates the European Union directive on racial equality,” he says. the lawyer for the residents of Mjolnerparken, Eddie Khawaja.
The anti-ghetto law was promoted by the conservative government of Lars Løkke Rasmussen in 2018, with the aim that in 2030 no residential area in Denmark exceeds 30% of "non-Western" neighbors. It was approved with the support of the Social Democratic Party of today's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, then in opposition.
The “ghettos”, a term that the Social Democrats changed to “parallel societies” in 2021, are ranked annually according to their proportion of citizens of “non-Western” origin. Any residential area with more than a thousand inhabitants where "non-Westerns" exceed 50% is included in the list if it meets at least two of these requirements: having more than 40% of the population without studying or working, more than 60% of residents with no education other than primary education, a rate of convicted criminals three times higher than the national average and gross income below 55% of the average for the region.
Some of the measures of the plan consist of forcibly separating children from 1 to 6 years of age from their parents for 25 hours a week so that they receive education in "Danish values", doubling the penalties for crimes committed by its residents with respect to citizens from the rest of the areas and invest millions of euros in the progressive demolition of these neighbourhoods.
Some neighbors have managed to paralyze their evictions until a ruling is handed down, but many others continue to receive letters to be evicted. The legal representative of the residents, Khawaja, believes that the cessation of evictions "could be one of the results" that are achieved in the long term. But the first thing is to get the CJEU to determine that "the criteria of the legislation constitute a principle of discrimination based on ethnic origin."
“This case is important far beyond the Mjolnerparken neighborhood”, Khawaja considers: there are many other neighborhoods in Denmark affected by the law. According to the lawyer, a court ruling in his favor would have "a high-profile impact in Denmark and in other member states trying to implement similar measures."
The anti-ghetto law has not been a campaign issue in recent elections, and this is due to the fact that “the Social Democrats have moved in a much more restrictive direction in recent years. Furthermore, these immigration policies have become so normalized in the last decade that it is no longer an area where politicians can compete,” according to Kristina Bakkaer, a political scientist at Aarhus University.
The political scientist considers that “the government will only take a step back with this legislation if it receives international pressure”, and adds: “I don't see that the pressure to change these measures is going to come from the Danish political community”.
The residents of Mjolnerparken will have to wait for the verdict of the European justice next year. A decision that, if favorable, will allow them to take the next step: sue the housing associations that are pressuring to sell the buildings to private investors.
