COPENHAGEN: Denmark has seized just over 25,000 euros from migrants arriving in the country in the three years since passing a controversial law allowing for the confiscation of valuables, police said Thursday.
Since the law was passed on January 26, 2015, officials have seized the equivalent of some 186,800 kroner (25,000 euros/$28,400) in cash as well as a car worth around 100,000 kroner, but they have not seized any jewelry.
Over that period, there have been 10 occasions when officials have applied the law, which allows for the confiscation of cash exceeding 10,000 kroner or objects of the same value.
The aim is to cover the individual’s costs while any asylum request is examined.
The legislation is just one of several legal measures aimed at dissuading migrants from going to Denmark, but one which has been sharply criticized abroad.
“It’s a question of principle: if you can help pay for your own needs, you should,” Immigration and Integration Minister Inger Stojberg told the Danish news agency Ritzau.
“It’s true for Danes and it’s true for refugees who come here.”
Engagement and wedding rings were initially included in the law but the government backtracked after the proposal sparked uproar, with the Washington Post comparing it to the Nazis’ theft of valuables from the Jewish community.
In December, Denmark received some 180 asylum applications — the lowest number since 2008.
In 2018, some 3,500 people sought asylum in Denmark, compared to more than 21,000 in 2015.
Over 3 years, Denmark seizes 25,000 euros from migrants
Over 3 years, Denmark seizes 25,000 euros from migrants
- Since the law was passed on January 26, 2015, officials have seized the equivalent of some 186,800 kroner in cash
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
