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This thoroughly modern market economy features high-tech agriculture, up-to-date small-scale and corporate industry, extensive government welfare measures, comfortable living standards, a stable currency, and high dependence on foreign trade. Denmark is a net exporter of food and energy and has a comfortable balance of payments surplus and zero net foreign debt. Also of importance is the sea territory of more than 105,000 km² (40,000+ sq m). The Danish economy is highly unionized; 75% of its labor force [11] are members of a union in the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions. Relationships between unions and employers are cooperative: unions have a day-to-day role in managing the workplace, and their representatives sit on most companies' board of directors. Rules on work schedules and pay are negotiated between unions and employers, with minimal government involvement. The unemployment rate June 2006 was 4.5% and falling, for a total of 123,100 persons. The government has been very successful in meeting, and even exceeding, the economic convergence criteria for participating in the third phase (a common European currency) of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU), but Denmark, in a September 2000 referendum, reconfirmed its decision not to join the 12 other EU members in the euro. Even so, the Danish currency remains pegged to the euro. The welfare model is the general term for Denmark to organize and finance their social security systems, health services and education. The principle behind the welfare model is that benefits should be given to all citizens who fulfill the conditions, without regard to employment or family situation. The system covers everyone; it is universal. And the benefits are given to the individual, so that e.g. married women have rights independently of their husbands. In the fields of sickness and unemployment the right to benefit is, however, always dependent on former employment and at times also on membership of a trade union and the payment of contributions; however the largest share of the financial burden is still carried by the State and financed from general taxation, not in the main from earmarked contributions. The State is involved in financing and organizing the welfare benefits available to the citizens to a far greater extent than in other European countries. For that reason the welfare model is accompanied by a taxation system which has both a broad basis of taxation and a high taxation burden. The benefits given are more generous than is the case in the British Beveridge model – and in combination with the taxation system this brings about a greater redistribution than is the case in the Bismarck model, which is aimed rather at maintaining the present status. For the past two years Denmark has ranked first on the Economist Intelligence Unit's "e-readiness" list. "A country's "e-readiness" is a measure of its e-business environment, a collection of factors that indicate how amenable a market is to Internet-based opportunities." |
Denmark Information: Inside
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