Søren Gade has a mission: He wants to give politicians in the Danish Parliament more peace of mind

Legislation requires time and immersion, which is why there will be fewer committees in the future to ease the pressure. These were the words of Søren Gade, longtime member of the Danish Parliament and former minister for the Liberal Party, when he spoke at the opening of the Danish Parliament. INVI spoke to Gade and a committee chairman who agrees with the diagnosis, but also sees advantages in the current structure.

Søren Gade has made it his mission to give the overworked working conditions at Christiansborg a thorough overhaul. Because as he says during our conversation:

"You don't get stressed by what you achieve. You get stressed by what you don't get to. And many people don't have time to read everything they need to and attend all the meetings they have in their calendar. But as I say: It's not God-given. It's something we have made ourselves. And it's something we can change."

And Søren Gade is well on his way. Specifically, together with his colleagues in the Committee on the Rules of Procedure of the Danish Parliament, he has launched several different initiatives to ensure more time for legislative work.

The minimum time for parliamentary consideration of a bill has been extended from the current 30 days to 40 days. The minimum time between the introduction of a bill and its first reading has been changed from 2 to 7 days. And the deadline for the so-called Section 20 questions for oral answers, which MPs can put to ministers, has been moved forward to give officials an extra day to prepare answers. The measures will be evaluated in January.

Søren Gade, President of the Danish Parliament

According to Søren Gade, another point that contributes to stressing out the MPs is the many committees. Today, the Danish Parliament has 30 standing committees, each with 29 members. A quick calculation shows that the 179 members of the Danish Parliament - not including ministers - have to divide 870 committee posts between them, which means that the average member of parliament holds around 5.1 committee posts - with great variation between the parties. In addition, there are 9 other committees, 6 delegations and 12 offices and boards. In other words, the Danish Parliament appoints around 1,100 positions - far more than the other Nordic countries, says Søren Gade. 

"In Norway they have 12 committees, in Sweden they have 15 committees, and you only sit on one committee. Then you get pretty deep into the matter. But in Denmark, we have far more parties because of our low threshold. So the delicate balance is to create committees that are large enough to ensure that everyone is represented and at the same time enable people to actually do their jobs."

Søren Gade is strongly inspired by the way Norway and Sweden have organized their parliamentary work. He says in an interjected sentence: 

"The voters have spoken, and there is also a trade-off there, because you can't sit with four seats and have the same influence as the Social Democratic Party with 50 seats."

Søren Gade also indicates that a new committee structure may mean that the smallest parties in the Danish Parliament will not necessarily have a seat on every committee as they do today. "This discussion about representation is part of the current discussions with the parties," he says. Changing the structure may also mean that the committees do not necessarily fully reflect the structure of the central administration.

Overall, however, Gade is in no doubt that something needs to change.

"You could say that it's up to the individual to prioritize their time, but we can also choose to listen to some of the new politicians who find that, as new employees in the Danish Parliament, they are given tasks that they really have no opportunity to solve. And that's because our system has to make a matrix for 30 committees that have meetings from Tuesday to Thursday work, and of course it can't," says Søren Gade and continues:

"If we play with the idea of reducing the number of committees to 20, that's about two committees per member that disappear. Then you, as a newly elected member of parliament, will be able to prioritize with your group chairman, who will also have the opportunity to say that committee members should not have meetings on top of each other."

Selection shopping

One of the relatively new faces in the Danish Parliament is Rasmus Lund-Nielsen (M). As the third largest party in the Danish Parliament, the Moderates had to fill a couple of committee chair positions, and one of them fell to him. Today, Rasmus Lund-Nielsen sits at the head of the table when the Health Committee meets at least once a week. He basically agrees with the idea of reducing the number of committee members, but then says

"On the other hand, it's not a big problem to be a member of a committee when attendance is optional. In that way, reducing the number of committees won't make much difference in terms of reducing stress. We all know that it's 'optional'. If you reduce the number of committee members, you're forced to come because you might be the only one from your party," says Rasmus Lund-Nielsen, before explaining that he usually skims through the agendas of the committees he's on and attends the meetings that are most relevant to what he's currently working on.

"Yesterday, for example, I attended a meeting of the Finance Committee because I thought there was something exciting on the agenda in one of my rapporteur areas," says Rasmus Lund-Nielsen and elaborates: "Right now there's a consensus that it's okay not to show up for a committee meeting if you have more important things to do, also because many of the meetings are at the same time." 

Stress and legal wrangling

But what could be the consequences of a busy political life? For Søren Gade, there are two issues to address. In recent years, there have been a number of stress-related sick leaves among elected representatives. One of those on stress-related sick leave has been the Alternative's superman, Torsten Gejl, who over a long period of time formed a veritable one-man army and held the party's 50 rapporteurships. He had to take sick leave with stress for almost six months. This is just one of many cases.

"You read a lot more papers today than you used to," says Søren Gade and continues: "If we make the piles of paper smaller, we can ensure that there are fewer stress-related illnesses."

An analysis from the think tank Justitia from this year agrees with Søren Gade. It shows that in the early 1970s, bills and resolutions totaled 9,729 pages. Fifty years later, this figure has increased to 21,336 pages. In an analysis from 2023, the think tank Cepos has also documented that while the average time from introduction to adoption of a law in the 1980s was 72.2 days, it only took 52.8 days in the parliamentary year 2022/23. The increased pressure on parliamentary politicians may ultimately lead to worse legislation, says Søren Gade.

"Obviously, if you can't sit down and read the papers because you sit on too many committees, there's a risk of legislation being fudged - that parliamentary politicians don't get the time they need to familiarize themselves with the legislation. It's called the legislative power, but the fact is that it's the government that comes up with the bills. Of course, it's the Danish Parliament that decides, but we have to make sure that the politicians in both the opposition and the government have the necessary time. As a citizen, you have to expect politicians to be their best selves when passing legislation," says Gade.

There will be a good solution in this parliamentary year

Søren Gade is quite optimistic about finding a model that the parliamentary parties can agree on. There is broad agreement on the diagnosis, and "there are good discussions and everyone is reasonably compromise-seeking, so I think we will get a result," he says

"At one point, we in the Subcommittee for Parliamentary Rules of Procedure took a day out of the calendar where we allowed ourselves to lower our shoulders and discuss this without any agenda. It was super constructive. What are the challenges of the current system? And how can we solve them? Everyone recognizes that this is a real problem," says Søren Gade and elaborates that a model will most likely be presented in the spring of 2025.

However, a new committee structure will only come into effect after the next election. Because it can be unpopular to take a committee chair position from a politician.

 A bigger discussion remains to be had

When the committee reform was introduced in 1972, it greatly strengthened the parliament's control over the government and ministers because ministers could now be monitored through direct questions and consultations.

Rasmus Lund Nielsen confirms that this is still true today.

"The committee meetings are most interesting for the opposition because they can ask committee questions directly to the minister," says Lund-Nielsen, before he also admits in the next sentence that some of what is going on in the committees right now may have a tinge of pseudo-work because much has already been approved by the ministries.

"You should be able to approach legislation more critically. It would be good to sharpen the relevance and make committee meetings more interesting," he says.

Rasmus Lund-Nielsen thus points out that the committees today can primarily be an arena for highlighting issues in the form of consultations and critical questions to the minister, rather than a forum for real policy development and legislative initiatives.  

In this connection, Søren Gade reveals that in parallel with a structural change to the committees, a process is underway to make committee work more interesting in terms of content. Sometimes, opposition politicians in particular can find it difficult to move policy to the committees, because the actual negotiations today often take place in the conciliation committees, where ministers sit at the end of the table.

This can potentially favor the more resourceful (government) parties, whereas smaller parties may be left outside the closed door of the ministerial office when a deal is made. Søren Gade is aware of this.

"Of course, there's a difference between being in a governing party and an opposition party. And my role is to make sure that the Folketing can control the government. So we're revisiting the code of good negotiation - how do you convene parliamentary politicians for negotiations and how late can you do it," Gade asks rhetorically.

And the chairman of the Health Committee, Rasmus Lund-Nielsen, agrees "one hundred percent" with this description of the problem.

"But," he says, "it requires a more inclusive democracy, because right now there is a concentration of power in the ministries. You should open it up more and be influenced more by MPs' initiatives. The question is whether the ministers' desire to maximize power is also in the interest of the community. And here I try to look at it a little more objectively than as a member of a governing party."

Fewer committee hours do not change the need for continued discussion about the balance between government power and parliamentary control and the role of committees in ensuring an open legislative process. Either way, however, MPs can probably look forward to a little more peace and quiet soon. At least if the Speaker of the Danish Parliament has his way.