One of Denmark’s longest-serving prime ministers, Poul Schlüter, has died at the age of 92.
Early Thursday morning, Poul Schlüter (K), the longest-serving prime minister since World War II and the only conservative in the 20th century, died.
He slept quietly into the age of 92 years. It announces the family through the Conservatives Friday.
– The family has lost a dear member, and our country has lost one of the most important people of our time.
– It is with sadness that I from Poul Schlüter’s wife and family pass on the announcement that former Prime Minister Poul Schlüter is dead, says the Conservatives’ chairman, Søren Pape Poulsen, in a statement.
Schlüter headed the government for 11 years and four terms, gaining control of both his party and the country’s economy while active in politics.
He was Prime Minister from 1982 to 1993, when the government resigned.
When he became chairman of the parliamentary group in 1974, the party had weakened after a lengthy showdown, and it was up to Schlüter to try to reunite the party.
He did this successfully in opposition to changing governments under the leadership of Anker Jørgensen (S).
With its media coverage and its result-seeking course – under the motto ‘Civil votes that work’ – it succeeded in making the Conservatives the largest bourgeois party in the Folketing.
And when Anker Jørgensen had to let go of the reins in 1982, Schlüter was the obvious replacement as prime minister.
His bourgeois four-leaf clover government implemented a number of economic austerity measures, including the potato cure and the Easter package.
They were instrumental in getting the Danish economy on such a good course that Schlüter at his party’s council meeting in April 1986 could state that things were going ‘unbelievably well’.
A deficit of DKK 80 billion on central government finances had turned into a plus, unemployment was at its lowest level in five years, and more than 150,000 more had found work.
But in January 1993, the Schlüter era ended, and it was not just the Prime Minister’s fault.
His party colleague Erik Ninn-Hansen had in his time as Minister of Justice ordered that the case processing of family reunifications with Tamil refugees be stopped.
To that, Schlüter from the Folketing’s rostrum has said that ‘nothing has been swept under the rug’.
But after three years of investigations, Supreme Court Justice Mogens Hornslet presented his 6,000-page Tamil report, in which he concluded that Ninn-Hansen had acted illegally.
There was also criticism of Schlüter, who chose to resign the same day.
The Conservatives have never since regained the same strength as under Schlüter.
He managed to garner 23.4 percent of the vote in the 1984 election, while the party received only 3.4 percent in the most recent election.
In addition to his political legacy, he will also be remembered for his witty humor and inventive quotes.
About the voter support, he said, for example, that ’90 percent of the Danish population are conservative – they just do not know ‘.
The funeral will take place on Constitution Day from Holmen’s Church in Copenhagen. The funeral and the subsequent memorial service are for the sake of applicable corona restrictions only for invitees.
