Covid-19: apologies and embarrassment from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at a press conference on December 1 in Copenhagen.

AP - Philip Davali

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

The Danish Prime Minister apologized on Saturday, December 4 on social networks.

Mette Frederiksen was filmed without a mask in a store, after the country had just reintroduced health restrictions.

Denmark experienced a record number of new cases of Covid-19 last Wednesday for a year.

This misstep is bad for the leader, who is to be heard by a parliamentary committee this week on the slaughter of mink farms in 2020.

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More than 15 million farmed mink have been slaughtered in Denmark in the fight against Covid-19.

The order, given in an emergency in November 2020, dealt a fatal blow to the industry.

Until then, Denmark was the world's largest exporter and second largest producer of mink skins.

►Also read: Mass slaughter after a threatening mutation of Covid in mink in Denmark

However, it later turned out that this decision was unfounded from a legal point of view.

The Minister of Agriculture had to resign and the Prime Minister had to apologize. 

But the matter does not end there.

Mette Frederiksen is due to go to MPs on Wednesday, who want to know whether or not she was aware, at the time, that the law did not allow her to impose such a decision.

The parliamentary committee is also very interested in the text messages which have disappeared from the Prime Minister's cell phone, even if her cabinet explains that the messages are automatically erased after thirty days for security reasons.

►Also read: Hundreds of mink farmers parade in Copenhagen, Denmark

It is definitely a week that promises to be difficult for the young social democratic leader, who therefore had to apologize in addition this Saturday, for forgetting to put on her mask in a store.

" 

", she declared, thanking the citizens for the efforts made in the fight against the pandemic.

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• Denmark

• Coronavirus

• Mette Frederiksen

• Health and medicine

• Animal health