New government reopens Schengen

"Tax breaks counter to government's promises," runs a headline in Danish daily Politiken referring to the speech delivered by Denmark's new PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt to Parliament yesterday. The Social Democrat Thorning-Schmidt announced an economic programme in line with that of the preceding Conservative/Liberal administration. Thus, notes Politiken, "Thorning can pick-up the reform policies interrupted" by Lars Løkke Rasmussen after the election, or even go further on economic issues. The reason, the paper explains, is linked to concessions that Thorning-Schmidt had to make to the Social Liberal Party and the Populist Socialist Party, both of which carry weight in the coalition she leads.

As for immigration policies, an issue in which the Social Democrats had promised to maintain the strict policies of the Rasmussen administration, there again, their partners imposed their views by demanding, for a start, that border controls reimposed last May and which roused an outcry in Europe, be revoked. A measure that, the paper says, "will restore Denmark's dignity".