Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has pursued a ‘zero refugee’ policy since coming to power in 2019.
The Danish government approved a “historically” low number of asylum applications last year, it has said.
The Nordic country granted asylum to 864 people in 2024. In total, 309 were from Syria, 130 were from Eritrea and another 130 were from Afghanistan.
The only time in the last 40 years that the annual figure was lower was in 2020, when lockdown measures were in force due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Immigration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek.
The minister said the decrease was down to the “strict asylum policy” pursued by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
Speaking to TV 2, he added that no more people should come to Denmark than “society can handle”.
Frederiksen said she wanted to reduce asylum applications in the Nordic country to “zero” after winning on an anti-immigration platform in 2019.
The country’s leader, who belongs to the centre-left Social Democratic Party, recently warned Europe’s “left” that it needs to be tougher on immigration if it wants to stop the surge of right-wing parties across the continent.
Denmark has introduced increasingly strict immigration policies over the past decade.
In 2021, the country passed a law allowing immigrants to be moved to asylum centres in partner countries. The decision was condemned at the time by the European Commission.
