Just in: The Danish Prime Minister is conducting a cabinet reshuffle involving three ministerial portfolios.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has just announced a change of three ministers. According to a press release from the Prime Minister's office, Mette Frederiksen will meet with Queen Margrethe II at Amalienborg Palace shortly at 11 a.m. to approve the new ministers, who are as follows:
Trine Bramsen, Minister of Transport
Morten Bodskov is the new Minister of Defense
Jeb Bruce is the new tax minister.
Trine Bramsen will take over the Ministry of Transport from the Ministry of Defence, Morten Bodskov will become Minister of Defence, and Jeppe Bruce will become Minister of Taxation.
The cabinet reshuffle comes after former Transport Minister Benny Engelbrecht resigned on Thursday evening following a vote of no confidence by the Unity List party. This followed revelations by MobilityWatch and the business magazine Ingeniøren that carbon dioxide emissions calculations had not been handed over during negotiations for a major infrastructure deal worth 160 billion Danish kroner, despite requests from several parties for the information.
The Independent Greens were the first party to want Benny Engelbrecht to resign, and a few hours later, politician May Wildsen held a brief press conference in which she explained that the Unity List party no longer trusted the minister.
The Liberal Party, the Danish People's Party, the New Bourgeois Party, and the Conservative Party later clarified that they would also vote against the minister. Benny Engelbrecht then chose to withdraw and resign, writing a post on Facebook expressing his regret: “I did my best to highlight the issue, which now means that I will leave. I also regret this, and I am of course sad and sorry that the Unity List party chose to say that it does not trust me.”
The third minister to leave Mette Frederiksen's government
Benny Engelbrecht was elected to Parliament in 2007. Having been the Finance Spokesperson for several years, he was appointed Minister for Taxation in Helle Thorning-Smådt's government in 2014, and Mette Frederiksen appointed him Minister for Transport in 2019.
Benny Engelbrecht is the third minister to resign from Mette Frederiksen’s government. In November 2020, then-Minister of Food and Agriculture Mogens Jensen resigned over the mink affair, and Joy Mogensen resigned as Minister of Culture in August 2021.
