Mette Frederiksen to start third term as Denmark’s PM

Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen is set to begin a third term as Denmark’s prime minister, leading a centre-left coalition of four parties after two months of negotiations.

Besides Frederiksen’s own party, the new Government will include the centrist Moderate party of outgoing Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Green Left (SF), and the Danish Social Liberal Party, the Danish Royal House said in a statement on Monday. It will be a government working for “the people of Denmark, for the generations to come and for the animals,” Frederiksen said Monday night.

Animal welfare was one of several issues that were debated during the campaign. Frederiksen had called an early election in February, apparently hoping her party would receive a boost from her straight-talking image in the standoff with US President Donald Trump over the future of the kingdom’s semiautonomous territory of Greenland.

Neither left-leaning nor right-leaning blocs won a majority in Parliament after the March vote. Denmark’s system of proportional representation typically produces coalition Governments that are traditionally made up of several parties from either the left or the right.

Frederiksen’s ruling coalition was created after two failed attempts to form a Government, one by Frederiksen and another by outgoing Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, who had sought to form a centre-right Government.

The new Government’s priorities will be presented on Tuesday, with the names of new ministers announced on Wednesday.

The 48-year-old prime minister has led the European Union and NATO member country since mid-2019. This time around, her party won 38 seats in the 179-seat single-chamber parliament, which was 12 fewer than in the 2022 elections. Frederiksen is known for strong support of Ukraine in its defence against Russia’s invasion and for a restrictive approach to migration.

In her second term, her support waned as the cost of living rose. But she enjoyed a bump in popularity as the Government navigated the crisis over Trump’s designs on Greenland.