Venstre mistakenly sent DR an internal draft of its citizenship plan, revealing two hardline proposals the party deleted four days before presenting the final version.
DR reports that it received a text message shortly before party leader Troels Lund Poulsen stepped in front of the cameras on Friday, August 21, 2026. The press conference was held during Venstre’s summer group meeting at Hindsgavl Slot in Middelfart. The message contained a version of the memo whose comment fields and tracked edits exposed internal deliberations.
According to DR, the document included remarks from several senior and central party staff. It shows that two far reaching tightening proposals were deleted on August 17, 2026. One would have required applicants to produce a set number of character witnesses, Danish citizens signing to confirm that the applicant wants Denmark.
The second deleted proposal would have capped citizenships granted each year to applicants with non-Western backgrounds at 250 people. DR notes that Venstre has previously opposed similar annual ceilings proposed by the Danish People’s Party. No one from Venstre agreed to an interview about the deletions.
Instead, the party sent a written comment from group chair and immigration spokesman Morten Dahlin. Per Dahlin, the ideas were not fully developed, and parties routinely discuss many proposals before presenting an initiative. He states that Venstre has no plans to table the proposals sent to DR.
Convention question avoided
DR also reports that Venstre dropped a more far reaching model for conditional citizenship. Under that version, new citizens would have received a Danish passport immediately and lost it if they committed crime within five years. The party itself noted in the deleted passage that this would require Denmark to leave the European Convention on Nationality.
A political consultant’s comment in the memo argued that Venstre had the best chance of avoiding a conventions discussion by presenting the milder model. In its own announcement on August 21, Venstre set out that model, where a passport follows a five-year period without crime carrying a prison sentence. As reported by Politiken, the presented tightening would have covered zero people in recent years.
Altinget listed the conditional citizenship model as one of the main announcements from the summer group meeting. Neither outlet covered the mistakenly shared memo.
DR places the case against the current halt in naturalizations. No citizenships are being granted to new applicants, because the existing indfødsret agreement no longer has a parliamentary majority. More than 16,000 applicants are now waiting for their cases to be processed.
An expert group is examining how to screen applicants’ democratic attitudes. According to DR, Immigration Minister Morten Bødskov will call parties to negotiations on a new agreement once that report arrives around New Year. CPH Post reports that government parties are clashing over the screening rules, with more than 2,000 advanced cases put on hold.
