Denmark’s Social Democratic leader, Mette Frederiksen, has announced that she has agreed to form a centre-left minority government, securing a third consecutive term as prime minister.
The breakthrough, announced on Monday, ends more than two months of political deadlock following a highly fractured March general election. The incoming cabinet will take power amid an immediate foreign policy crisis with the United States over the future of Greenland.
The agreement to form the government comes after more than 60 days of political haggling involving 12 parties. A brief failed attempt by the centre-right Liberals to form a rival government cleared the way for Frederiksen to finalise her minority cabinet.
“I have been to see His Majesty the King and announced that a government can be formed after long negotiations,” Frederiksen told reporters in Copenhagen.
However, the 48-year-old prime minister faces a deeply precarious landscape. In the March 24 election, voters frustrated by a prolonged cost-of-living crisis stripped her previous centrist coalition of its majority.
Her Social Democratic Party saw its representation drop from 50 to 38 seats in the 179-seat parliament, marking its lowest finish since 1903.
However, the sternest challenge for the returning premier will be the tension between Copenhagen and Washington over Greenland, which has spiked following threats from US President Donald Trump to annex the self-governed, Danish territory.
Frederiksen has firmly rejected any suggestion that Denmark will cede sovereignty, stating that a US takeover would “signal the end of NATO”.
Navigating the strategic standoff over Greenland’s defence installations, vast mineral resources and the operational future of the US Pituffik Space Base, located in the northwest of the territory, will be her administration’s central challenge.
Beyond the Greenland dispute, the new government faces a rapidly deteriorating security environment in Europe. Frederiksen’s immediate tasks include managing a buildup of Denmark’s military defence capabilities, driven largely by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
Under her stewardship, Denmark has already rapidly increased defence spending to more than 3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and taken the historic step of expanding military conscription to women.
