Despite widespread condemnation, MPs are expected to vote in favour of controversial reforms including a delay on family reunifications

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Denmark’s parliament is expected to vote on Tuesday in favour of drastic reforms curbing refugees’ rights, including delaying family reunifications and confiscating their valuables.

The country has insisted the new law is needed to stem the flow of refugees even though Denmark and Sweden recently tightened their borders.

Denmark to force refugees to give up valuables under proposed asylum law Read more

While international outrage has focused on a proposal allowing police to seize cash and valuables from refugees to help pay for their stay in asylum centres, rights activists have also criticised a proposed three-year delay for family reunifications which they say breaches international conventions.

The plan has “a particularly bitter connotation in Europe, where the Nazis confiscated large amounts of gold and other valuables from Jews and others,” The Washington Post wrote.

Prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of the right-wing Venstre party has shrugged off criticism by calling it “the most misunderstood bill in Denmark’s history”. Opinion polls that show 70% of Danes rank immigration as their top political concern.

“Rasmussen has to be elected in Denmark... not (by) the international media,” Bjarne Steensbeck, a political commentator at public broadcaster DR, told AFP.

The minority government eventually changed parts of the plan to confiscate refugee’s valuables in order to secure parliamentary backing for the bill from two small right-wing parties and the opposition Social Democrats.

Refugees will now have to hand over cash exceeding 10,000 kroner (£1022, $1,450) and any individual items valued at more than that amount, a sum raised from the initial proposed 3,000 kroner.

After thorny negotiations with the other parties, integration minister Inger Stojberg agreed to make wedding rings and any other items of sentimental value exempt.

An immigration hardliner, she has repeatedly stated that “Danish immigration policy is decided in Denmark, not in Brussels.”

Once a champion of refugees’ rights, the Scandinavian country’s goal is now to become “significantly less attractive for asylum-seekers.”

“The tone in the public debate about refugees and immigrants has undoubtedly become tougher,” Kashif Ahmad, the leader of the National Party, which hopes to enter parliament by targeting the immigrant vote, told AFP.

Amnesty International has said refugees would face “an impossible choice” if the waiting period for war refugees before they can apply to bring over their family was increased from one year to three.

“Either bring children and other loved ones on dangerous, even lethal journeys, or leave them behind and face a prolonged separation,” spokeswoman Gauri van Gulik said.

Home to 5.6 million people, Denmark registered 21,000 asylum applications in 2015, making it one of the top EU destinations per capita for migrants but putting it far behind the 163,000 registered in neighbouring Sweden.

International criticism has mounted in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, with refugee agency UNHCR claiming it violates the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Refugee Convention.