Page:CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6.pdf/33

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6

D. National policies (U/OU)

1. Domestic

From the time of their defeat by Prussia and Austria-Hungary in 1864, which resulted in the loss of Schleswig and Holstein, until the German occupation in 1940, the Danes lived a largely introverted existence. By choice they remained aloof from international turmoil, and circumstances allowed them to do so. During this three-quarters of a century, they concentrated on building a well-run domestic society. The dominance of the Social Democratic Party from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s provided direction and continuity for Danish efforts in the domestic realm, and the bourgeois parties during the short breaks in Socialist power largely abstained from attempting to reverse what had been accomplished. Despite philosophical and practical differences, Danes of all political persuasions tend to agree that the government has an important role in guiding the domestic life of the nation, and that it should seek in some fashion to promote national growth and the general welfare of the people. The means to attain such objectives, however, are argued sharply among the contending political parties.

The Danish experience during World War II, traumatic though it was, left the country largely free of the physical depredations suffered by much of western Europe. The economy, in 1945 still principally agricultural, was intact, though depleted by the lack of basic commodities, including fertilizer, and by the protracted stricture on Denmark's world trade. Transportation and industrial production were soon restored, however, and by the early 1960s, with a strong boost from the Marshall Plan, overall recovery had taken hold.

With the revival of the economy, the government turned its attention to the improvement of the quality of life. The modern social welfare era dates from 1933, when a series of four acts known as the Social Reform overhauled and rationalized the various programs which had been introduced almost haphazardly from the turn of the century to the mid-1920s. In the post-World War II era the government promoted considerable legislation to further modernize and broaden the already comprehensive system. Typical of these efforts were major legislative acts or amendments to already existing acts in several prime fields: unemployment benefits (1958, 1962), health insurance (1961), old-age pensions (1956), widows' pensions (1959), industrial injuries (1954, 1956, 1959, 1962), and housing (1946, 1955, 1958, 1961). In areas such as housing, where less than satisfactory pre-war conditions were worsened by the war, the government continue to expend its greatest energies, principally supporting through loans and loan guarantees, the efforts of private builders and cooperatives to provide more and better homes. By the mid-1960s the effort was substantially rewarded. Although the Dane was spending less than 15% of his income on housing, his accommodations in terms of number of persons per room, electricity, and bathing and toilet facilities were the best in Europe, with the possible exception of Switzerland. In the early 1970s, with the entire population adequately housed and city slums all but eliminated, official efforts were directed toward the enlargement of accommodation, the urbanizing Danes, just as the urbanizing Swedes, having grown restive in their modern, well-equipped, but small and confining apartments in the large housing developments. There is evidence, still uncorroborated by statistics, that many average Danes, just as their North American, West German, or French contemporaries, would prefer private detached dwellings, a preference revealed in the numerous villa developments going up outside cities and towns in the mid-1970s. Government attention by the mid-1960s was also directed toward broad town and regional planning, with emphasis on optimum land utilization. In 1963 a highway act introduced the concept of state highways, build, maintained, and administered by national rather than by local authorities.

The domestic side of life is serious business for any Danish national government. It is generally considered a fact of political life in Copenhagen that domestic issues, particularly social welfare and economic and commercial well-being, take precedence over purely political foreign policy concerns.

Even the bourgeois parties, when in power, have felt the need to maintain a forward thrust on all sections of the domestic front, tailoring their foreign concerns to the maintenance of economic progress at home. By the early 1970s, however, such continued momentum was becoming difficult to sustain. The essential long term balance between socialization and the continued stimulation of private economic initiative - a balance which most observers of the scene consider the cornerstone of the markedly successful Scandinavian development - seemed in mid-1973 to be in some jeopardy.

As in neighboring Sweden, the continually mounting taxes needed to expand further the welfare programs and to improve the government-sponsored facilities and services are inspiring a newfound resentment. Until recently there were only rare and muted criticisms of government voiced by the civic conscious, generally responsible Danes. In early 1973,

27

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6