Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksenannoucned Wednesday that the country would be holding a snap national election after her ruling coalition fractured in the aftermath of a mink cull that took place during the coronavirus pandemic.
Prime Minister Frederiksen, the leader of the Social Democrats, announced the snap elections after her party’s allies, the Social Liberal Party, threatened to hold a vote of confidence against her minority government, which has been in power since 2019.
The snap election comes after Fredericksen has lost popularity over her role in the culling of the country’s entire captive mink population during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 in order to allegedly protect humans from possible mutations of the virus, Euronews reports.
Fredericksen and her government were criticised in June of this year by a parliamentary commission which slammed the government for killing millions of animals, including healthy mink not infected by the coronavirus. A total of eleven people were infected by the animals but no evidence emerged that the mutation was any more or less virulent than other strains of the virus.