Denmark Drops Public Holiday to Boost Military in Unpopular Move

(Bloomberg) -- Denmark’s government has pushed through a widely disliked law that will scrap a public holiday to finance higher military spending.

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The parliament late Tuesday voted to drop the Great Prayer Day from 2024, a move the government expects will boost the public budget surplus by roughly $470 million per year, and gross domestic product by three times that.

The government of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wants to increase defense spending to reach 2% of GDP in 2030, three years earlier than previously planned, to counter the increased threat from Russia.

While Danes are overwhelmingly in favor of boosting the military, they had opposed the plans to eliminate the day off with opinion polls showing the government is hemorrhaging support. Opposition parties in parliament, bishops at Denmark’s state church as well as labor union leaders have protested and almost 500,000 Danes had signed an online petition to keep the holiday.

Great Prayer Day, which falls on the fourth Friday after Easter, was introduced in 1686 as King Christian V merged a number of smaller religious holidays into one to improve productivity.

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