Frederiksen earlier handed in her centrist coalition government’s resignation after a massive election defeat but she could still emerge as the leader of a new Danish government

International News via Reuters:

Denmark’s king asked Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Social Democrats on Wednesday to explore the formation of a new government with two left-wing parties, kicking off what could be weeks of talks to build a working parliamentary majority.

Frederiksen earlier handed in her centrist coalition government’s resignation after a massive election defeat but she could still emerge as the leader of a new Danish government.

Analysts say Tuesday’s election result marked a voter revolt over the outgoing government’s broken economic promises and a sign that the electorate has grown tired of Frederiksen as a leader after seven years in power.

Her Social Democratic Party suffered its worst election result since 1903, winning just 38 seats in the 179-seat parliament – down from 50 – but it remains the largest party in parliament.

Voters’ concerns over domestic issues such as the environment, the cost-of-living crisis and welfare outweighed any support Frederiksen garnered with her defiant stance towards U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated ambitions to acquire Denmark’s semi-autonomous territory of Greenland, analysts said.

“This loss was larger than you could explain just by the cost of ruling,” said Rune Stubager, a political scientist at Aarhus University.

POLARISED ELECTORATE SHIFTS TOWARDS MARGINS

Stubager attributed the defeat to polarising economic decisions, such as the controversial scrapping of a public holiday, tax cuts for high earners, and a last-minute proposal to introduce a wealth tax, which failed to resonate with voters.

King Frederik X tasked Frederiksen with exploring a coalition of her Social Democrats with the Green Left, which won 20 seats, and the Social Liberal Party, which secured 10 seats.

But while other left-wing parties may support this constellation, Frederiksen would also need support from the centrist Moderates party or right-wing parties to form a working majority for her policies in parliament.

If she fails to build a new coalition, the king would have to invite another person to explore options for forming a new government.

The election reflected a broader trend of voters moving away from centrist parties. Right-wing nationalist parties increased their share of the vote to 17%, from 14.4% in 2022, while the Green Left Party also gained ground.

The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party also capitalised on concerns over inflation and living costs, promising to cut fuel taxes and staging campaign events offering discounted petrol to motorists, Stubager said.

While Frederiksen’s tough immigration policies remained broadly in line with public sentiment, the domestic economic agenda carried more weight in this election, analysts said.

NEITHER BLOC HAS A MAJORITY

Despite their losses, the Social Democrats remain Denmark’s biggest party with 21.9% support, meaning Frederiksen is widely seen as having a good shot at returning for a third term as prime minister.

“That is the paradox of the election, that the huge loser, Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister, she is the favourite to become the next prime minister as well,” political analyst Noa Redington said.

In total, Frederiksen’s left-wing bloc secured 84 seats in parliament, slightly ahead of the right-leaning bloc’s 77 seats, leaving both sides short of the 90 seats required to form a majority government. The Moderates, led by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, emerged as a potential kingmaker with 14 seats.

Frederiksen acknowledged the fractured electoral landscape during a Wednesday debate, saying the result excluded the possibility of forming a traditional right- or left-wing government.

“So what is left is that we need to cooperate. That is the message here,” she said.

Since 2022, Frederiksen has led a grand coalition of the Social Democrats, the right-of-centre Liberal Party and the Moderates. The leader of the Liberal Party, Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, has said he is no longer interested in coalition rule with Frederiksen.

Reporting by Tom Little, Soren Jeppesen and Louise Breusch Rasmussen in Copenhagen and Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm, writing by Stine Jacobsen, editing by Alex Richardson and Gareth Jones

Looking to draw a line under a bruising defeat in a referendum on reforms to the judiciary, Meloni on Tuesday secured the resignation of two scandal-hit officials

International News via Reuters:

Italy’s Tourism Minister Daniela Santanche handed in her resignation on Wednesday, following a call from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for her to step aside over a string of legal accusations.

“Dear Giorgia, As you have officially requested, I hereby tender my resignation from the role of minister that you had wished to entrust to me, and which I believe I carried out to the best of my abilities,” Santanche wrote in a statement.

Looking to draw a line under a bruising defeat in a referendum on reforms to the judiciary, Meloni on Tuesday secured the resignation of two scandal-hit officials and also asked Santanche, long accused of financial wrongdoing, to leave her tourism post.

Santanche — a member of Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party — initially resisted the highly unusual public demand from the head of the government, who under Italy’s post-war constitution cannot directly sack ministers.

She then said she was quitting “only in response to a request (from) the leader of my party” and did not want to be the scapegoat for a referendum defeat “which was certainly not my fault.”

“Having said this, I have no difficulty saying ‘I obey’ and doing what you ask of me,” she added.

In the wake of the referendum defeat, the prime minister was quoted in the press as saying she was no longer prepared to cover for discredited allies. 

OUTSPOKEN STYLE

Known for her outspoken style, Santanche has been mired in long-running court disputes but had resisted repeated calls from the opposition for her to quit.

She faces a trial on false accounting charges at the Visibilia publishing group she used to own, and prosecutors are also seeking her indictment for alleged benefit fraud at the same company during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In disputes going even further back, she is under investigation in two cases of alleged fraudulent bankruptcy in a bio-food group that she was chairwoman of.

Santanche’s decision to quit came after the centre-left opposition tabled a no-confidence motion that would have been discussed next week, creating a potential serious embarrassment for Meloni. Applause broke out in the lower house after news of her resignation.

“I will not hide from you a certain bitterness over the outcome of my ministerial path, but in my life I have grown used to paying my own debts, and often those of others as well,” Santanche said.

Reporting By Angelo Amante and Gavin Jones, editing by Alvise Armellini and Hugh Lawson

Services account for around 70% of the EU’s gross domestic product, but only 20% of them are provided across borders

International News via Reuters:

The European Commission is not doing enough to remove internal EU barriers to cross-border services, a major source of economic growth for the 27-country European Union, the European Court of Auditors said on Wednesday.

Services account for around 70% of the EU’s gross domestic product, but only 20% of them are provided across borders because of big differences in authorisation and certification requirements for service companies between countries.

The ECA, an independent external auditing institution of the EU, said 60% of all the obstacles to cross-border services identified in 2002 were still there in 2023, showing their removal had not been a priority.

“Businesses in the EU continue to face an uphill struggle in providing services in a cross-border capacity,” said Hans Lindblad, the ECA member leading the audit. “The Commission’s efforts to do away with barriers are still insufficient.”

GROWTH COULD BE 2.5% HIGHER WITHOUT BARRIERS, ECA SAYS

The International Monetary Fund said its research showed internal legal and administrative obstacles between EU countries were equal to 110% tariffs on services offered across borders. 

According to the ECA, the European Commission’s own research showed that if existing barriers to cross-border services were removed, the bloc’s economic growth could be 2.5% higher within a few years. 

The Commission said last year the issue was one of the main barriers to making the EU’s single market of 450 million consumers work better at a time of increased economic competition with the U.S. and China.

EU governments are often not keen to promote cross-border services due to pressure to protect their labour markets and vested interests, especially in the bloc’s 5,700 regulated professions, from lawyers and engineers to carpenters or beauticians.

The Commission is not keen to make proposals that would be shot down by national capitals. 

The ECA said the Commission should identify the economically most significant barriers to cross-border services and push EU countries to address them by linking their removal to access to EU money – the strongest leverage it has.

The Commission should also review EU laws on cross-border services to make them less ambiguous, crack down on enforcement, and speed up the processing of complaints by service companies denied business in other EU countries, the ECA said.

Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Jan Harvey

Adorni said investments in oil, mining and agriculture require large terrain

International News via Reuters:

Argentina’s government will send a bill to Congress that seeks to change the limits on foreign ownership of rural land, Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni said at a news conference on Wednesday, the latest step by the Milei administration to boost foreign investment in the country.

Adorni said investments in oil, mining and agriculture require large terrain. 

President Javier Milei’s administration has pursued a sweeping pro-market reform agenda aimed at attracting foreign capital, rolling back interventionist policies and deregulating key sectors.

“Today, the most important businessmen of the world look at Argentina as a historic investment opportunity,” Adorni said.

Adorni also referred to a federal judicial investigation that has been opened into a trip he made last February to Punta del Este, Uruguay, on a private airplane. The investigation is looking into whether the trip was made as part of government business, according to local newspaper La Nacion.

Adorni, who has characterized the trip as a vacation for which he used private funds, said he had “nothing to hide.”

Reporting by Nicolas Misculin and Lucila Sigal, writing by Leila Miller, editing by Cassandra Garrison and Nia Williams

Guterres told reporters he had been in close contact with many in the region and around the world and that a number of initiatives for dialogue and peace were underway

International News via Reuters:

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday named veteran French diplomat Jean Arnault to be his personal envoy on the conflict in the Middle East, saying it was “out of control” and the “world is staring down the barrel of a wider war.”

Guterres told reporters he had been in close contact with many in the region and around the world and that a number of initiatives for dialogue and peace were underway.

He said these must succeed and warned that prolonged closure of the Strait or Hormuz was choking movement of oil, gas, and fertilizer at a critical moment in the global planting season.

“It is time to stop climbing the escalation ladder – and start climbing the diplomatic ladder,” he said at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

“My message to the United States and Israel is that it is high time to end the war – as human suffering deepens, civilian casualties mount, and the global economic impact is increasingly

devastating,” Guterres said.

“My message to Iran is to stop attacking their neighbors,” he added.

Guterres said Hezbollah must stop launching attacks into Israel and Israel must stop its military operations and strikes in Lebanon, which were hitting civilians the hardest.

“The Gaza model must not be replicated in Lebanon,” he said.”

Disrupted fertilizer shipments and soaring energy prices from the war in Iran have threatening to unleash a fresh food-price surge across vulnerable nations, risking a years-long setback just as many were recovering from successive global shocks, U.N. and other experts warn.

The U.N. says Arnault has more than 30 years of experience in international diplomacy focusing on peace settlements and mediation, with a background in United Nations missions in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

His most recent assignment was in 2021 as Guterres’ personal envoy on Afghanistan and regional issues.

Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama