Morten Messerschmidt holds a law degree from the University of Copenhagen. Since 2022, he has been the chairman of the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti). A member of the Danish Parliament from 2005 to 2009, he was elected MEP in 2009 and remained in the European Parliament until 2019. In June of that year, he was again elected to the Danish Parliament.
Your party, once the second-largest political force in Denmark, suffered a serious split in 2022. Where does the Danish People’s Party stand today?
The Danish People’s Party entered a crisis after the election to the Danish parliament, the Folketinget, in 2019. The party went from 21% of the votes to 8.7%. The Danish People’s Party had otherwise grown steadily from election to election since its founding in 1995, both in the Folketing and in the European Parliament. I received over 465,000 votes in the 2014 European Parliament election, a record that still stands and demonstrates that there is a healthy scepticism in Denmark towards the centralization of power in Brussels. However, the parliamentary election in Denmark in 2019 was a disappointment to us. The strategy of the Danish People’s Party—to attract voters who traditionally voted for the Social Democrats and who were dissatisfied with the massive immigration—was a success. But paradoxically, it also led to many of those Social Democratic voters returning to the Social Democratic party, which eventually adopted significant parts of the Danish People’s Party’s policies on issues such as immigration, Islam, crime, etc.
So, yes, the Danish People’s Party was split. If there was any political soul-searching, it was about whether the Danish People’s Party should have entered a government with the centre-right parties. Should the Danish People’s Party have toppled the government when the wave of mass immigration hit Europe in 2015, and Denmark’s government did nothing?
The Danish People’s Party fundamentally stands for the same principles as when it was founded in 1995: opposition to Danish culture being overshadowed by massive Islamic immigration; defence of national sovereignty; opposition to ceding power to the European Union; traditional family values; a Christian cultural foundation; law and order; and a social balance that prevents the disintegration of society.
As you mentioned, Denmark’s centre-left government has taken up your position on mass immigration and followed a restrictive policy. Is this change a victory for the Danish People’s Party?
Yes. I am proud that the Danish People’s Party, earlier and more strongly than in any other country in Europe, initiated an open discussion about the severe consequences that mass immigration, particularly from Islamic countries, had for Denmark. Perhaps there is historically a more open and liberal tradition for political debate in Denmark. Just a few kilometres from our coast, in Sweden, there was a pure dictatorship of opinion, where any attempt to raise the issue of Islamic immigration was denied, silenced, and suppressed by a solid front of experts, politicians, and journalists. This dictatorship of opinion has only been broken in Sweden in recent years. Naturally, the Danish People’s Party faced opposition from the ruling political classes—not least the media—but those opposed were forced to allow a more open discussion.
You believe that Denmark has a restrictive immigration policy? That says more about how lenient and naive the political majority has behaved in other European countries. It is true that the Danish People’s Party has used its strength to make it harder to obtain a residence permit in Denmark, harder to become a Danish citizen, and harder for a migrant to bring their entire family to Denmark. We also introduced some control at the Danish borders during certain periods. But there is still a long, long way to go. Both our own legislation, and especially our international conventions and treaties, make it extremely difficult to revoke citizenship from criminal foreigners or to deport and repatriate them from Denmark. The conventions have proven to be the biggest obstacle to Denmark being able to pursue a truly restrictive immigration policy.
The European elections are on June 9. What are the main ideas of your program for Europe?
The purpose of the Danish People’s Party participating in the European Parliament elections—which we otherwise believe should not exist—is to prevent more transfer of Danish sovereignty to the European Commission and Brussels.
Denmark did not join a political European Union in 1973, but an economic cooperation. But from being a liberal economic project, today we have a European Union that wants to homogenise member countries down to the smallest detail, politically and ideologically. It is somewhat paradoxical that an economic project that 50 years ago was accused of being the project of the Right wing and capitalism has today been taken over by centre-left attitudes, red-green ideology, and anti-growth philosophy—all controlled by a plethora of so-called NGOs and committees that are not subject to the control of European voters.
I cannot accept that parties like the Danish People’s Party are called “anti-European.” We are not anti-European, but we are anti-federalists and anti-centralists. We support a strong Europe that stands firm on its Judeo-Christian foundation, clearly positions itself in Western civilization, and defends its values. And that requires nation-states where the inhabitants can be sure to govern their own territory.
Do you think there will really be a shift to the Right on June 9?
I am convinced of that. If the most reliable opinion poll holds true—conducted by the European Council of Foreign Relations—then the so-called “anti-European populists” will get the most votes in nine EU countries. In nine other EU countries, they will be either the second or third largest. It is not unrealistic that the anti-federalist parties will occupy over a quarter of the seats in the European Parliament. This changes the position on the whole chessboard. If the red-green parties suffer a setback, as it seems, then we can wrest the so-called “Grand Coalition” of the centre from its majority. This means that the conservative, Christian parties both can and must look to the Right—to the two EU-critical groups, ECR and ID—if they want to stop the most extreme outcomes of the so-called green transition in Europe or pursue a sharper policy against immigration.
You know the European Parliament well and have several books on the growing and worrying power of Brussels. Is it possible to change the undemocratic course of the EU?
It is a constant power struggle—a kind of political guerrilla war. I believe that, more than ever, it is possible to prevent the advance of the union supporters. They exploit everything—Greece’s economic collapse, the COVID epidemic, Russia’s war against Ukraine—to expand their power and increase integration. My analysis is that, this time, the EU centralists will face opposition to their climate policy, which is destroying Europe’s competitiveness. Is it possible to change the character of the European Union? It requires a massive political upheaval in the decisive countries in Europe.
Your party belongs to ID. Is the formation of a single European conservative and identitarian group possible? If not, do you think that an alliance of ID and ECR could push the EPP back to the Right?
It is absolutely desirable. We are not politicians if we do not work in favour of larger and more important goals. We must put our differences aside and unite around a program that places national sovereignty at the top. ECR and ID have the same opponents in the apparatus of the European Union and the European Parliament: it is primarily the red-green parties that threaten to destroy Europe’s competitiveness with their ideology, dirigism, centralism, and constant intervention in the member countries’ own affairs.
When I was in the European Parliament, the Danish People’s Party was first in an alliance with UKIP and Nigel Farage, whom I admire greatly, by the way. I miss Britain in the European Union and the European Parliament. Later, I joined the ECR Group. But from my point of view there are no Berlin Walls between the ECR and ID Groups, and I see the best chances for a strong opposition in the European Union by uniting our forces. That is also what our electorates expect. There is more that unites us than divides us.
