ECONOMICS YEARLY REVIEW

Danish government placed advertisements in Middle Eastern newspapers
warning that “entry regulations for refugees had been tightened and
unsuccessful asylum seekers would be swiftly returned”. 17 In December, the
Prime Minister even declared that the 1951 refugee convention might need to
be revised. With this in mind, it is also worth recalling that he Danish PM paid a
visit to the British PM in September 2015 (hence, at the core of its campaign on
the referendum on JHA, to be held few months later) to meet and discuss with
Cameron on the current refugees situation. What emerged from this meeting –
as reported by the international press – was that the two leaders shared the
same desire “to keep the EU from turning into a what Rasmussen has
characterized as a “social union”. 18 The concerns of the Danish PM mirrored the
tangible fears of the Danes to have the solidity of their welfare system
endangered by the refugees eventually imposed by the EU (with the system of
national quotas), as the newly arrived refugees could be entitled to claim social
benefits. On the occasion of the meeting with the British PM, Rasmussen
explicitly declared to the journalists that : “the different member states should
have some access to protect their own welfare model” 19 . Such a declaration
could be seen as a message to the Danish electorate that their PM was (and still
is) very much willing to shield national sovereignty.
With a more specific regard to the concrete arguments used for and
against the opt-in model, it is worth recalling that in November 2015, a year
ahead of the actual referendum, Gallup (the American consulting company,
specialised in opinion-polls) made an exercise where a representative group was
asked a number of questions about the referendum before and after having
taken part in public debates about the issues that the vote would have covered.
The survey prior to taking part in the debates showed a rather even distribution
17 Ibid.
18 Løkke and Cameron find common ground on refugees and welfare, The Local, 22 September
2015, available at http://www.thelocal.dk/20150922/lkke-and-cameron-find-common-groundon-refugees-welfare.
19 Ibid.
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