DANISH MPs voted overwhelmingly yesterday to confiscate refugees’ cash and valuables to pay for their stay in Denmark.
Bill L87 passed 81-27 with one abstention.
Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen’s liberal Venstre party won the vote with the support of the Social Democrats and the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party.
The draconian act — requiring refugees entering Denmark to surrender cash or valuables worth over 10,000 kroner (£1,000) — is expected to come into force next week when Queen Margrethe signs it into law.
That amount is an increase on original proposal of 3,000 kroner (£300) .
It equals the threshold of savings and assets above which unemployed Danes are not allowed to claim benefits.
In return for handing over their cash and belongings, refugees will get a bed in one of the country’s tent camps in the freezing Scandinavian winter.
The act also increases the period refugees must wait before their spouses, children or parents — even of unaccompanied children — can join them from one to three years.
Denmark accepted 20,000 refugees last year, compared to Germany’s 1.1 million and Sweden’s 163,000.
Communist Party of Denmark chairman Jurgen Petersen condemned the “scandalous” law, saying it was part of a raft of measures designed to force those fleeing war to seek refuge elsewhere.
“Confiscating the valuables of refugees, which we have seen before in the history of Europe, is an inhumane scandal showing how far the right-wing government — with the support of the Social Democratic Party — are ready to go,” Mr Petersen said.
He accused the government and its supporters of dodging its obligations as “active participants in the wars in the Middle East that these refugees are trying to escape.”
He pointed out that Denmark was “once known as a strong defender of international conventions” but now the “vast majority of parliament are unified not only in going to the limits of these conventions [but] in trying to undermine them.”
By contrast, Mr Petersen hailed the solidarity shown to refugees by ordinary Danes.

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