Danish hotels and restaurants face record manpower shortage
Hotels and restaurants in Denmark are facing the greatest shortage of manpower since at least 2011, Statistics Denmark, the country's state statistics agency has said.
Almost a quarter of the companies in the service industry surveyed by the agency said they were facing labour shortages, up from just 19 percent in May. This is the highest level since the agency began tracking the metric in 2011.
"It is probably one of the most powerful recovery we have ever had. Simply because it is a reopening," said Lars Olsen, chief economist at Danske Bank. "It is something completely different from what you get in a normal recovery. There you have to gradually rebuild trust. You could not just reopen after the financial crisis."
The construction industry is also facing manpower shortages, with 37 percent of companies surveyed saying they lack manpower.
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Denmark's Court of Impeachment to rule on whether to televise Støjberg trail
Denmark's Court of Impeachment (Rigsretten) will decide on Tuesday morning whether to allow TV cameras to broadcast directly from the courtroom during the impeachment trial of former immigration minister Inger Støjberg in the autumn, it said in a press release.
Normally, it is not permitted to take pictures or shoot video from inside a courtroom in Denmark, but Støjberg herself has said she wants the press to have an opportunity to broadcast from the courtroom.
Støjberg is on trial for breaking the law when she ordered asylum seeker couples to be separated.
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Less than 200 new infections detected in Denmark for third day in a row
A further 151 people tested positive for coronavirus in Denmark in the 24 hours to 2pm on Monday, meaning that the number of new infections has stayed below 200 a day for three days, and below 300 a day since June 18th.
Denmark's hospitals are currently treating 65 patients for coronavirus, one fewer than on Sunday.
Danish mink mutation ‘could have affected vaccine effectiveness’: study
The coronavirus mutation that led Denmark's government to order the cull of the country's 15m mink -- cluster 5 -- showed resistant to both naturally attained antibodies and those generated by the Pfizer vaccine, a new study by Denmark's infectious diseases agency SSI has concluded.
The study, published last week in the scientific journal Frontiers in Microbiology, goes some way towards excusing the mink cull, which has been seen as the Danish government’s biggest misstep during the pandemic.
“Blood samples have been taken from people who have recovered from covid-19 infection with cluster 5 and we looked at how well their antibodies could neutralize this virus,” Tyra Grove Krause from the SSI, told the Ritzau newswire.
“You can see that cluster 5 is more resistant to these antibodies than the other virus variants that were in circulation at the time. So on that basis, one can say that this raises concerns about whether the same could apply to vaccine antibodies.” Read our story here.
Danish parties agree 160bn kroner infrastructure deal
Denmark's political parties on Monday morning announced an agreement over infrastructure spending up until 2035, with 160bn kroner to be splurged on road, rail, bridge, tunnel, and cycling projects.
Of this 64bn kroner will go on road projects, including no fewer than nine motorway improvements, 86bn will go on public transport, mostly on rail, but also on buses, metro services and light rail. Read our explainer here.
Danish media team up to forge copyright deals with Google and Facebook
Denmark's main media outlets said on Monday that they are banding together to negotiate copyright payments for news content used by tech platforms such as Google and Facebook.
In 2019, an EU directive gave media rights to be compensated for links to their content by web giants in order to ensure better compensation for creators of news content. In Denmark, nearly all media including the public TV stations have joined together to negotiate collectively.
“The collective bargaining organisation can give the Danish media industry bigger bargaining power,” said Stig Ørskov, CEO of JP-Politikens Hus, the leading Danish print media group.
“Often the big techs sign non-transparent separate agreements, they use a divide and conquer strategy and what we hope to achieve is a collective agreement that will be beneficial for the whole industry,” Ørskov told AFP.
The collective bargaining organisation will be officially launched on Friday and Ørskov said he expected negotiations to begin soon as informal contacts with Google have already taken place.
Smukfest festival re-emerges as Småfest with five one-day events
Denmark's Smukfest festival, which usually hosts 55,000 people at its site in Skanderborg outside Aarhus, has announced plans to hold a series of stripped down mini-festivals between July 30th and August 7th, with five concert days, each of which will host just 1,000 people.
Småfest will host some big Danish performers, including Suspekt, Jung, Aqua and Dizzy Mizz Lizzy.
The organisers did not want to divide the festival into separate sections, which limited the number of people the festival could host.
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