COPENHAGEN. The Danish parliament yesterday decided to cancel the spring public holiday in order to increase the country’s defense spending.

The deputies voted 95 in favor and 68 against the abolition of the Day of Great Prayer, a religious holiday established in the 17th century in a Protestant country.

According to the coalition government of the Social Democrats and conservatives, led by Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen, the cancellation of the holiday will replenish the state treasury by 400 million euros, which will be directed to the defense budget.

The reaction to the measure is registered, however, by the opposition, unions and representatives of religious denominations. Three weeks ago, more than 50,000 protesters gathered in central Copenhagen to protest the government’s plan and its insistence on NATO funding targets.

“This is a robbery. The government is ordering citizens to work an extra day,” said Carsten Onge, an MP for the center-left Socialist People’s Party. However, despite the reaction, there were not enough opposition votes to hold a referendum.

The government claims that the additional funds raised from the holiday are needed to meet NATO’s defense spending target of 2% of total GDP by 2030 for all members of the Alliance. There are currently 11 public holidays in Denmark.

The 400 million euros that will be saved will go to the defense budget.

“I don’t think the extra work day is a problem. We are facing huge spending on defense and security, healthcare, psychiatry and the green transition,” Fredriksen said when she presented the plan to parliament in January.

Prosecution of former minister

Meanwhile, the prosecution against the former Minister of Justice of Denmark, Klaus Jort Fredriksen, was approved by the Copenhagen prosecutor’s office. Fredriksen is accused of publicly revealing the existence of a “relationship” between Danish military counterintelligence and the US NSA in 2021. At the time, the minister said that Denmark allowed the US agency to intercept data from a submarine fiber optic cable in Danish territorial waters.

The US agency has reportedly been monitoring the communications of European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel in this way for many years. Hjort Fredriksen, a member of Denmark’s conservative Liberal Party, is now facing charges of “high treason”. Parliament in a vote in January refused to strip the former minister of parliamentary immunity.

Hjort Fredriksen claims his revelations are nothing more than what former NSA agent Edward Snowden revealed in 2013, while he insists that as an elected member of parliament he was supposed to inform the public. In the late 1990s, Denmark and the US signed a secret cooperation agreement aimed at monitoring telecommunications. Despite the preservation of immunity, the trial of Fredriksen will take place as usual, but behind closed doors for reasons of national security.