The plan seeks to raise the cap on public spending from 0.6% of GDP to 0.8% in 2014-2020. This would add 7 billion Danish crowns (€941 million) to government spending compared to business as usual and boost employment by 180,000 people, according to the plan.
The 2020 budget plan was presented by Denmark’s centre-left government which was formed in October last year. It aims at balancing the budget by the end of the decade by boosting the number of employed people against those on social benefits and pensions.
“The government’s message is that it is possible to save and develop our welfare society, but it can only happen if more Danes are able to get a job,” Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said at a news conference.
“It’s an ambitious goal, but it’s a goal we can reach if we take responsibility now,” she added.
Overall, the government expects the Danish economy to grow by 2.25% per year by 2020, creating jobs in the private sector along the way.
“This is where we have lost jobs in the past and it’s where we want to regain them,” Minister of Economic and Interior Affairs Margrethe Vestager said.
However, the plan was not immediately well received by the leftist Red-Green Alliance party, on which the government depends for support.
“The way the plan looks right now, more people will be forced to work because the government is going to cut their benefits. And then there’ll be more employed people. This is a philosophy that we are against, and we don’t think it will create the amount of jobs, they say,” Frank Aaen, a member of the parliament for the Red-Green Alliance, told the daily Politiken.
