The EU can’t stop Denmark’s migrant crackdown

Nørrebro, Copenhagen’s hip, multicultural inner-city area, was crowned the world’s coolest neighbourhood by Time Out in 2021. Former residents include Denmark’s greatest living film star Mads Mikkelsen. If you’ve viewed Nordic noir TV dramas depicting the nexus of hip urbanism and the tribulations of mass migration, you’ll have seen plenty of Nørrebro (sometimes called ‘Nørrebronx’ in tribute to the formerly dangerous region of New York City). 

The murder location in season two of The Killing? Nørrebro. Mohammed and Saif’s grocery shop in The Bridge? Blågårdsgade in Nørrebro. The café where fictional Danish Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg meets her son in Borgen? Tjili Pop in Nørrebro. Unfortunately, Nørrebro no longer features in the Time Out cool neighbourhood rankings. Instead, a Nørrebro social housing project, Mjølnerparken, is the key location in a legal battle between the Danish government and the EU which is playing out at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.

Mjølnerparken, deemed a ‘parallel society’ by Denmark’s Social and Housing Ministry, is home to nearly a thousand people, 87 per cent of whom are ‘non-western’ immigrants (in the Danish government’s taxonomy) or their descendants.