Why is Denmark separating ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ citizens?

Seven families from Helsingor, a coastal city north of Copenhagen, are facing their former landlord in Denmark’s Supreme Court.

In a two-day hearing that began on Friday, they are arguing they were forced from their homes because of where they, or their parents, come from.

Their leases were terminated in 2022 under a 2018 law, once known as the “ghetto law”, which targets social housing estates where more than half of residents are classed as “non-Western”. The government claims the law is aimed at integration. But rights groups have for years fought against the measures, saying they are discriminatory.

“It’s about whether the criteria regarding the tenants’ origin is neutral or not,” Eddie Khawaja, the families’ lawyer, told the news agency AFP.

So what does “non-Western” mean, and could the courts bring the law down? Here’s what you need to know:

It is a statistical label that covers most of the world.

In 2020, the UN Human Rights Office said: “Statistics Denmark, under the Danish Ministry for Economic and Interior Affairs, defines ‘non-Western’ as any country outside the EU, with the exceptions of Andorra, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, the USA, and the Vatican State.

“The effect is that ‘non-Western’ disproportionately means Denmark’s non-white, non-European ethnic populations,” it stated. The label also covers descendants: anyone born in Denmark if neither parent is a Danish citizen born in the country.

That means a Danish citizen born and raised in Copenhagen can still be “non-Western”.

Every December 1, the government names “parallel societies”.

These are social housing areas of at least 1,000 people where more than 50 percent are “non-Western” immigrants and descendants.

An area must also meet two of four criteria on unemployment, crime, education, and income.

Areas on the list for five years become “transformation areas”, which the government used to call “hard ghettos”.

They must cut public family housing to 40 percent by 2030 through sales, demolition or conversion.

An estate with the same social problems but fewer “non-Western” residents faces no such obligation.

The government says the goal is integration.

The law was part of a plan called “One Denmark without Parallel Societies: No Ghettos in 2030”.

In 2021, Kaare Dybvad Bek, then interior minister, said too many non-Western foreigners in one area “increases the risk of an emergence of religious and cultural parallel societies”.

About 11,000 people across Denmark will have to leave their homes by 2030, according to tenants’ associations.

In Helsingor, the landlord Boliggarden announced in early 2020 that it would renovate 96 apartments at the Nojsomhed estate. It then terminated the tenants’ leases. Most of those tenants were of foreign origin.

“They didn’t want the estate to be labelled ‘hard ghetto’ so they wanted to forcibly move us out when we advocated for other solutions,” Riad, a 33-year-old plaintiff who did not want his family name published, told AFP.

The law may be discriminatory, but Danish judges ultimately make the final decision about whether it violated Danish laws prohibiting ethnic discrimination.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in December 2025, in cases brought by tenants from Mjolnerparken in Copenhagen and Schackenborgvaenge in Slagelse. It said nationality or country of birth alone does not determine ethnic origin, but an allegedly neutral criterion covering many origins could be linked to ethnicity.

That runs contrary to the Danish government’s position and the reasoning of the lower Danish courts in the Helsingor case, which found that the “non-Western” does not describe an ethnic group and therefore did not result in discrimination that violated Denmark’s Equal Treatment Act.

Danish judges must decide whether the “non-Western” criterion really rests on residents’ ethnic origin, the court said, and consequently, if people included in the criterion are afforded less favourable treatment.

Less favourable treatment, it noted, could include “an increased risk of early termination of their leases”.

In January, Sophie Haestorp Andersen, then minister for social affairs and housing, told a parliamentary hearing that authorities must keep applying the law until the Eastern High Court rules, the Danish outlet Danske Kommuner reported.

The four-party coalition in power since June includes the Green Left (SF), which voted for the law in 2018, according to the public broadcaster DR. The party’s Jacob Mark is now minister for children, elderly affairs and housing.

No date has been officially set for the verdict, but reports suggest it could be handed down later this month.

If the families win, they would probably be rehoused in homes similar to the ones they had to leave.

The Mjolnerparken case is still before the Eastern High Court.