Denmark

Who needs a visa for Denmark is decided by Regulation (EU) 2018/1806: Annex I nationals need one, Annex II nationals do not for 90 days in any 180-day period. Denmark's own Aliens Act writes the free stay in the same words - 90 days in any 180-day period, counted backwards from every day of stay - and the visa regulation lists nine classes of exempt person, one of which is simply everyone the Union's rules exempt. The thing most summaries get wrong is why the Regulation applies here at all: article 6 of Protocol No 22 says in terms that Denmark's opt-out from the area of freedom, security and justice does not apply to measures determining which third-country nationals need a visa. Denmark is bound by this Regulation as Union law, not as an international obligation it chose to take on, and the Regulation's preamble names the United Kingdom and Ireland as outside it and says nothing about Denmark at all.

Danish work permits are a closed list: section 9 a(2) of the Aliens Act numbers fourteen grounds, and everything the schemes are popularly called - the Pay Limit Scheme, the Positive List, the Fast-Track Scheme, Startup Denmark - is one of those numbers. Two are bare salary tests with no occupation attached: 400,000 kroner a year under number 3, and 375,000 kroner a year under number 13, which adds a condition nothing else in the subsection has - the seasonally adjusted gross unemployment rate over the preceding three months must not have exceeded a level the minister sets, and the post must have been advertised on Jobnet and the EURES portal for at least two weeks. Both figures are adjusted every year by the rate-adjustment percentage, so the number printed in the Act is the number as it stood when the Act was consolidated.

Denmark has no residence permit for someone who can support themselves from outside the country. The Aliens Act grants residence on named grounds and the list is closed: protection under sections 7 and 8, family under section 9, employment or self-employment under section 9 a, humanitarian grounds under section 9 b, exceptional grounds under section 9 c, former Danish nationality under section 9 d, religious work under section 9 f, study under section 9 i, au pair under section 9 j, internship or volunteering under section 9 k, a working holiday under section 9 l, accompanying family under sections 9 m and 9 n, Denmark's international obligations under section 9 p, and retired staff of international organisations under section 9 q. Money appears everywhere as a condition attached to one of those grounds and nowhere as a ground of its own.

There is no retirement route to Denmark. Section 9 q of the Aliens Act is the only provision in which retiring is the reason for a permit, and it is drawn very tightly: you must be over 60, have retired because your employer's retirement age fell due, no longer be economically active, and have lived lawfully in Denmark for the last twelve years continuously on a permit issued under section 47(1) as a member of staff of an international organisation or a Union institution based here. A spouse and a minor child who held permits on the same footing can follow. Nothing in the Act lets a foreign pension, however large, stand as a ground of its own.

Denmark does not sell residence. The Aliens Act has no investor permit and names no sum of money to be invested. The one business route is section 9 a(2)(10): an innovative business plan for running or continuing a self-employed business, or for operating through a Danish branch of a foreign business, assessed favourably by an independent expert panel appointed by the Danish Business Authority, and granted only inside an annual quota of seventy-five. The permit is conditional on your own means supporting you and any accompanying family for the first year, and renewal depends on the business actually being established and in all essentials living up to the plan the permit was granted on.

Section 9 i(1) of the Aliens Act lets a permit be given to someone admitted to a course of education at an institution here - may, not shall, which is how most Danish residence grounds are drafted. Separate subsections cover doctoral students, the part-time professional master's degree, and foreign doctors, dentists and nurses working towards Danish authorisation. After the degree, section 9 i(18) allows a residence and work permit to look for a job, and then stops: section 9 i(19) hands the minister the power to make the rules about it, including how long it lasts. The Act therefore states that the job-hunting period exists and does not state its length.

Danish nationality by descent is settled at the moment of birth: a child is Danish if its father, mother or co-mother is Danish. There is no residence route for a grandchild, and none for an adult child of a Dane as such. What there is - and it is a shall rather than a may, which is rare in this Act - is section 9 d: a residence permit is given on application to someone who previously held Danish nationality, unless it was taken away by a court or by the minister for fraud or for conduct seriously damaging the state. Danish descent also shortens the road to naturalisation rather than to residence: the naturalisation guidelines let the ordinary residence requirement be relaxed for former Danish nationals, people of Danish descent and Danish-minded South Schleswigers.

Section 9(1)(1) of the Aliens Act is the spouse route, and it sets an age on both sides: the applicant must be over 24 and the person living in Denmark must be over 24 as well. The sponsor must be a Danish national, a national of another Nordic country, a refugee, a holder of temporary protected status of more than two years' standing, or someone who has held permanent residence for more than the last three years. The permit is a may rather than a shall. On top of the usual support undertaking, the sponsor must lodge financial security of 57,000 kroner with the municipality for ten years against future public assistance to the applicant - a figure fixed at 2024 levels and adjusted every 1 January - and the municipality may reduce it once the applicant passes a Danish test at A1 or A2 level.

The first sentence of the Danish Aliens Act is the Nordic one: nationals of Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden may enter and stay in Denmark without any permission at all. It carries no conditions, no registration, no time limit and no money test, and it is the oldest free-movement arrangement in this corpus still written as one line of a statute. The second is the Union's: section 2(1) gives nationals of a Union or EEA state three months from entry, section 2(2) extends the same period to their third-country family members, and section 2(3) says the Act's own restrictions apply to people covered by the Union's rules only so far as those rules allow. A registration certificate or residence card is issued on application under section 6, which is evidence of a right rather than a grant of one.

The Danish Nationality Act says one thing about naturalisation and then stops: nationality may be acquired by naturalisation under the Constitution. It sets no residence period, no language level and no income test, because none of those is law in the ordinary sense. Each naturalisation is a line in a bill passed by the Folketing, and what the immigration minister will put in such a bill is governed by an agreement between political parties - the agreement of 20 April 2021 between the Social Democrats, Venstre, the Conservative People's Party and Liberal Alliance - published as a circular to the authorities with the agreement itself printed as an annex. That circular is where the nine years of continuous residence, the two years of permanent residence, the self-support condition, the three-and-a-half years of employment, the Danish language exam and the 2021 citizenship test actually live.

The Danish Withholding Tax Act opens with the two tests. Section 1(1)(1) catches people who have a bopæl - a home - in Denmark, and section 1(1)(2) catches people who have no home here but stay for a period of at least six months, counting short holidays abroad into that period rather than out of it. Section 7 is the trap: acquiring a home does not by itself make you liable, because liability under section 1(1)(1) starts only when you take up residence here, and a short stay for a holiday or the like does not count as taking up residence. Alongside that sits the researcher and key-employee scheme in sections 48 E and 48 F: a flat 27 per cent withholding on contractual pay for up to 84 months in total, open to anyone meeting a monthly pay floor of 59,500 kroner at 2010 levels, and open to approved researchers with no pay floor at all.

Section 7(1) of the Danish Health Act gives everyone with a bopæl here the right to the Act's services, and section 7(2) then defines bopæl in four words: registration with the Folkeregister. Nationality does not appear in the test at all, and nor does a residence permit; the permit is what lets you register, and the registration is what gives you the care. Someone without a bopæl gets what section 80 gives a person temporarily in a region - acute treatment, and further treatment where it would not be reasonable in the circumstances to send them home or where they cannot stand the journey. Inside the system, people in security group 1 choose a general practitioner and are treated by that doctor free of charge.

Danish banks must offer a consumer a basic payment account in kroner unless opening it would breach the money-laundering Act. The right runs to consumers lawfully resident in a Union country or a country the Union has a financial-services agreement with - and, unusually, to consumers who have not been granted a residence permit but cannot be removed. The bank has ten working days from a complete application to open the account or refuse, must give written reasons for a refusal and must point the applicant at the financial complaints board and the supervisory authority. The services must be free or carry only a reasonable fee, and the Act does not cap what reasonable means. The identification a bank has to take is name and CPR number, or a date of birth where the customer has no CPR number.

Once you have your normal residence in Denmark you need a Danish licence. A licence from another Union or EEA state keeps working for its own validity period and exchanges without anything further. A licence from anywhere else keeps working for 180 days from the day you become normally resident, and after that it exchanges only if you pass a check test - unless it was issued in one of the countries that exchange without one. That list is the thing worth reading carefully. It is not in the licence regulation and it is not in the regulation that governs exchange without a test: that regulation, from 2016, says the traffic authority decides country by country on application and publishes an updated list on its own website. The only named list anywhere in the statute book is in the 2014 regulation the 2016 one repealed, carried forward by a transitional sentence saying those countries are taken to qualify without applying again.

Denmark does not decide this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enters free of import duties on conditions a directly applicable Union regulation sets: six months' possession and, for durable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of the move, in as many consignments as you like inside that period. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all.