The Copenhagen Post Feb 17-23

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Wondercool: February’s fab festival. Special section

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King Beer! Your bard’s down the pub

G2

Rock ✽

Jazz ✽

Fashion ✽

Design ✽

Cooking ✽

Art ✽

INSIDE

ACTA support cools as debate heats up

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17 - 23 February 2012 | Vol 15 Issue 07

Denmark’s only English-language newspaper | cphpost.dk COLOURBOX

NEWS

Denmark looks to lay Europe’s energy

Foundation for the future 4

Admitting that forced co-operation doesn’t always work, state changes custody laws

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NEWS

Youngest kids spared Criticised practice of deporting minors will now end – at least for children under the age of eight

5 NEWS

Foreign students: We love it in Copenhagen and want to stay here, but we can’t find jobs

10 BUSINESS

Too big to fail

JENNIFER BULEY

Danske Bank has become so large that if it were to fail, it would take the country with it, experts say

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Evictions and unpaid bills on the rise New statistics paint a picture of a more impoverished Denmark

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N ECONOMICALLY depressed areas of Denmark, such as Lolland Council, ten percent of the population are behind on their bills. But even in affluent areas, like Copenhagen’s posh northern suburbs, 2.5 percent of the residents owe creditors for products or services they purchased but never paid for, according to a new study by the credit rating agency Experian. End-of-year reports from 2011 showed a worrying upswing in unpaid bills, consumer debt levels, and even

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homeless children across Denmark. In 2009, at the height of the recession, 16 percent of the population did not have the cash to pay their bills. But two years later, during the recovery, the figure has risen to 28 percent, according to the financial supervisory authority Finanstilsynet. The number of debtors has risen fast in the past two years, and Experian’s analysts also note that the amount owed has also risen sharply. In January 2008, unpaid consumer debt totalled 7.4 billion kroner. In January 2012, it topped 13.5 billion kroner. In 49 percent of all cases of unpaid debts and delinquency, an unexpected expense – like a car in need of repairs or a broken appliance – is what pushed peo-

A new

ple over their limit. According to Louise Skjødsholm, a department manager at Finanstilsynet, that fact is revealing. “What it shows is that, at the most basic level, these people don’t have any savings that they can draw on if something goes wrong and the refrigerator suddenly has to be replaced,” she told Politiken newspaper. But for another group of Danes, it is not the surprises that push them over the edge into insolvency but rather predictable monthly expenses, like rent, that are beyond their means. Two of the country’s largest rental management companies, KAB and Boligselskabet Danmark, are reporting a 25 percent increase in the number of forced evictions from the end of 2010 to the

end of 2011. In Copenhagen, city administrators have seen a ten percent increase in the number of forced evictions, where a bailiff shows up at a person’s home and forces them to remove their belongings and vacate the premises on the spot. Children are involved in one out of every five of these evictions, Politiken newspaper reports. “Ten years ago, we had one or two evictions per week. Now we have two every single working day – and that’s just in our company. And ten years ago, we almost never saw children in this situation. Now we see many,” KAB’s president, Jesper Nygård, told Politiken.

Evictions continues on page 4

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