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New MPs in the Danish parliament lack political experience - but is that a bad thing?

Ritzau/AFP/The Local
Ritzau/AFP/The Local - [email protected]
New MPs in the Danish parliament lack political experience - but is that a bad thing?
According to Jyllands-Posten, the average of years of parliamentary experience in the Danish parliament has decreased by more than half a year since the general election in 2019. Photo by Semih Yılmaz / Unsplash

The new Danish parliament is the most politically inexperienced one since the landslide election in 1973, according to the newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

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The members of parliament (Folketing) who were elected or re-elected on November 1 have an average of 7.1 years of parliamentary experience.

Peter Bjerre Mortensen, a professor of political sciences at Aarhus University, told Jyllands-Posten that it is healthy for democracy when people with new experiences enter parliament.

But he also sees a risk if too many new faces appear.

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"It takes a long time to familiarize yourself with the issues in a given policy area, and if you have a large turnover in the parliament, one of the consequences can be that it takes a long time before the politicians get down to the issues," he said.

He has previously written a book about the problems related to taxes in Denmark. While working on the book, he and a colleague found, among other things, that there was a large turnover in the Danish parliament's tax committee.

Less experienced

According to Jyllands-Posten, the average of years of parliamentary experience in the Danish parliament has decreased by more than half a year since the general election in 2019.

And this is despite the fact that the politicians who were re-elected have gained three and a half years more experience since the last election.

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The development is partly due to the fact that many politicians who have been in the Danish parliament for many years did not stand for election again.

Furthermore, some parties have put forward new MPs who have never sat in the Folketing before.

 

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