Youth wing KDup | Founded 13 April 1970 Political position Centre to Centre-right | |
Headquarters Vermlandsgade 512300 København S Ideology Christian democracyRegionalism | ||
The Christian Democrats (Danish: Kristendemokraterne) are a political party in Denmark. The party was founded in 1970 to oppose the liberalization of restrictions on pornography and the legalization of abortion. It was known as the Christian People's Party (Kristeligt Folkeparti) from April 1970 to 2003. Originally, the party was not considered part of the European Christian democratic tradition, and it was better known as a religious conservative party.
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The Christian Democrats are a member of the European People's Party (EPP) and the Centrist Democrat International.
History
It was formed in 1970. Since its inception, the party has enjoyed an intermittent presence in the Parliament of Denmark, rarely winning much more than the two percent minimum required to gain seats under Denmark's proportional representation system, and frequently falling below the threshold, as happened most recently in the 2011 and 2015 parliamentary elections. Despite its small size, the party has served in a number of coalition governments. From 1982 to 1988, it was in coalition with the Liberal Party and Conservative People's Party; from 1993 to 1994, it served in government with the Social Democrats, the Social Liberals and the Centre Democrats.
From 2002 to 2005, the party was led by Marianne Karlsmose. The name of the party was changed to the Christian Democrats in 2003. In October 2005, the party elected Bodil Kornbek as its new chairman. Her attempt to introduce a more secular centre-left profile had some success in the beginning, but in the 2007 and 2011 parliamentary elections, the party received no seats. In October 2008, Kornbek was replaced by Bjarne Hartung Kirkegaard, who represents its more rightist and religious wing.
In 2010, the Christian Democrats regained parliamentary representation when the former Conservative People's Party member Per Ørum Jørgensen joined the party. Since he was not formerly known for having expressed particularly religion-based opinions, these events once more softened the religious character of the party.
On 30 June 2011, it was announced that the Christian Democrats had started cooperating with the grassroot party Fælleslisten, a single-issue party fighting for decentralization, especially in health policy, with some success in regional and local elections. This means that candidates from the two parties appeared on a joint list at the 2011 Danish parliamentary election. The Christian Democrats had themselves taken a somewhat regionalist stance at a moment when Fælleslisten had surged in opinion polls.
In September 2012, Per Ørum Jørgensen resigned and subsequently left the party altogether in order to form a new party called Democratic Party. A new chairman, Egon Jakobsen, was appointed ad interim. On 27 October 2012, the former deputy chairman Stig Grenov was elected as new chairman.