The government has now accepted a comprehensive evaluation of the handling of the coronavirus crisis after previous rejections. A majority of members of the Folketinget (the Danish parliament) now support such an evaluation. Until now, the government, consisting of the Moderates (Venstre), the Social Democrats (Socialdemokratiet), and the Liberals (Venstre), maintained that an evaluation was not necessary. In 2023, they voted against a proposal for this. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (S) was also the prime minister during the coronavirus crisis, and both the leader of the Liberals and the Moderates, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, have repeatedly called for an evaluation both during and after the crisis. The new evaluation was unanimously adopted at a meeting of the Folketinget’s Epidemic Committee, as reported by Ekstra Bladet. The upcoming evaluation will not be an official commission. The National Research and Analysis Center for Welfare, also known as Vive, will be in charge of the evaluation. This change in approach made a difference for the Social Democrats, according to the party’s spokesperson on epidemics, Flemming Møller Mortensen. “We are now voting yes because we have gained more distance from the pandemic. This makes it natural to look at what we have already investigated and what is still missing,” he told Ekstra Bladet. Work on the evaluation is expected to start later this year, with results expected to be completed by the end of 2025. Regarding the previous resistance to a commission investigation, Flemming Møller Mortensen said: “Previous proposals became very polemical and political. Now we are looking at it in an objective manner to find out where we lack knowledge.”

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