CHILD BENEFIT (2)

The argument about child benefit has now spread to all sorts of other benefits. In some ways this is not surprising; the idea of foreigners coming to Denmark in order to scrounge benefits is compelling to the average citizen, even if it is not based on fact. One troublesome fact is that more child benefit is paid to Danes living in Sweden and Germany alone than is paid by the Danish authorities to people from all other E.U. countries. In other words, even on a strict "what do we pay out, what do we get?" calculation, Denmark is way ahead. And, as I said before, this ignores what the foreign worker contributes in taxes to the Danish state.

The problem with all this is that there is a European election coming up in May, and people tend to vote with their hearts, not with their heads. As things stand, the very right-wing Danish People's Party is set to hoover up lots of votes from people fed up with the E.U. Similar patterns are likely in other countries. This, in my view, is not a good thing.

Walter Blotscher