(COPENHAGEN) - A ruling by the European Court of Justice may sound the death knell for Denmark's restrictive immigration policy by forcing it to ease family reunification rules, and could trigger a government crisis down the road.

The July 25 ruling by the EU's highest legal body stipulated that under a 2004 European Union directive on free circulation of people within the bloc, EU members may not refuse entry or right of residence to non-EU spouses and family.

This means a Danish citizen can bring his or her spouse to Denmark even if the spouse is a failed asylum seeker or previously resided illegally in the EU.

The ruling has gone largely unnoticed in the rest of the bloc, but has sparked a fiery debate in Denmark, where strict immigration laws block family reunification for non-EU citizens residing in the Scandinavian country illegally and in cases where one of the spouses is under the age of 24.

"The Danish government strongly disagrees with this ruling" which undermines its family reunification policy, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

"Denmark determines its own immigration policy and it remains unchanged," he stressed. "The government will not tolerate having its family reunification rules hijacked," he added.

He called the EU court ruling "unreasonable", and has formally expressed his opposition to the European Commission. He is trying to persuade several other member states that share his point of view, among them Britain, Germany and Italy, to have it changed.

The ruling is "in stark contrast to the efforts to combat illegal immigration in the EU," he said.

Strict immigration policy is a cornerstone of Denmark's Liberal-Conservative minority government, which has retained power since 2001 thanks to the informal support of its far-right ally, the Danish People's Party (DPP).

Its immigration legislation, broadly supported by Danes, is among the most restrictive in Europe.

The strict rules have led to a sharp drop in the number of people who have immigrated to Denmark as part of family reunifications, from about 13,000 in 2001 to 4,500 in 2007.

-- 'It would be political suicide' --

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Integration Minister Birthe Roenn Hornbech said recently the European court ruling "opens the way for widescale approval of illegal immigration" through marriages of convenience.

"I wonder if the European court has been given too much power ... and if the EU is not determining a bit too much of Denmark's immigration policy," she said.

The head of the DPP, Pia Kjaersgaard, has urged the government to ignore the ruling.

"Otherwise, our entire immigration policy will fall apart," she warned.

Political observers see a major conflict simmering for the Danish government.

"A conflict between EU law and Danish immigration policy is lining up to be the biggest crisis on the horizon to date for (Rasmussen's) government," a political columnist at daily Jyllands-Posten wrote recently.

Rasmussen, whose government voted in favour of the 2004 directive on free movement within the EU, has already said that while he is opposed to the court ruling his government will comply with it.

A large majority of Danes, 62 percent according to a recent Gallup poll, said meanwhile they thought it was unlikely the prime minister would be able to rally enough support among other EU member states to bring about a change.

Polls confirm the gravity of the situation: six out of 10 voters support Denmark's immigration policy and the recent EU court ruling has made 37 percent of Danes more sceptical towards European Union cooperation, perceiving it as an infringement of Denmark's sovereignty.

According to analyst Thomas Larsen, the court ruling means the prime minister has likely "abandoned all plans of organising a referendum on the Danish EU exemptions in the near future."

Denmark has four opt-outs to EU membership, granted to make the EU's Maastricht Treaty more palatable after the country initially rejected the treaty. They allow it to remain outside the eurozone, EU joint defence policy, European citizenship and judicial cooperation, under which immigration issues fall.

Rasmussen has urged scrapping all four, saying they were "incompatible with Danish interests" and kept the country from fully participating in European cooperation. He has said one or several referendums on the exemptions would be held in the near future, though no date was set.

Now, "it would be political suicide" if he went ahead with those plans, Larsen said, noting that polls show 39.4 percent of Danes do not want to join the EU's joint immigration policy and only 30.1 percent do.

Judgment of the European Court of Justice in Case C-127/08
Metock e.a.

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