What’s going on with our neighbors? LN employee Rüdiger Wenzel looks north
Banana peel warns speeders: Humor can be a good helper in traffic. This is shown by an initiative by the municipality of Thisted in northwest Jutland. In the village of Sjørring, which is crossed by a busy road, the LED displays that are common in Denmark do not inform drivers of their current speed and any excesses. Rather, a yellow star lights up on the electronic information boards when drivers are adhering to the speed limit of 50 kilometers per hour. If you drive too fast, the boards show a discarded banana peel and signal: Caution, danger! As Danmarks Radio reports on its website, these funny symbols have resulted in Sjørring driving much slower: Whereas 78 percent of the cars used to be too fast, according to the Thisted municipality it is now only 17 percent. The average speed in town then fell from 55 to 48 kilometers per hour.
Sharp criticism of visit to Israel: The Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is sharply criticized in her home country for visiting Israel on Thursday together with Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. At the meeting, Frederiksen and Kurz had agreed with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the three countries would work closely together on the development and procurement of corona vaccines. Even support parties of the social democratic minority government in Copenhagen accuse Frederiksen of wasting valuable time with her visit to Israel and the subsequent four days of quarantine on the much more urgent deliberations on possible further easing of the corona lockdown in Denmark from March 15. The trip was unnecessary, the agreement could also have been reached at an online conference. It had already been formulated in detail in advance by experts from both governments. In addition, spokesmen for Radical Venstre and the People’s Socialists criticized Frederiksen for having helped Netanyahu, who was badly hit domestically, in the election campaign. There are parliamentary elections in Israel in three weeks. The Minister of State rejected the allegations: An election campaign in a country could not be an obstacle to working with him. In addition, the cooperation could help to improve the vaccine supply in Denmark.
EU resistance is melting away: The days when Denmark was one of the uncertain candidates in the EU are apparently over. Proponents of the country’s exit from the EU have been losing more and more popular support recently. Only 20 percent of those questioned voted in a recent representative survey on behalf of Danish radio and the political magazine Altinget for a “Dexit”, Denmark’s exit from the EU, 65 percent want to stay in the Union. Until the success of the Brexit advocates in Great Britain in 2016, around 40 percent of voters in polls were in favor of leaving, only around 45 percent for staying. Political scientists attribute this development not least to the turbulence into which Brexit plunged Great Britain. But that could change once the British have overcome their exit-related problems, warn the scientists
From Rüdiger Wenzel
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