New aggression against a European leader in the run-up to the European elections being held on Sunday. On this occasion, the person attacked was the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, who has been attacked in the middle of the street by an individual who has already been arrested by the Danish police and is scheduled to go to court this Saturday.
According to several Danish media The attack occurred in Kultorvet Square in Copenhagen where the prime minister was for personal reasons after having attended several campaign events with the social democratic candidate, Christel Schaldemose.
The Police have already opened an investigation to clarify what happened, while the Danish Prime Minister’s office has confirmed to the local Ritzau agency that Frederiksen is “shocked” by what happened and has canceled his participation this Saturday in events in Herlev, Rødovre, Roskilde, Holbæk and Slagelse.
The same agency also confirms that after the attack The prime minister was transferred to the hospital on Friday Rigshospitalet for a check-up and has been diagnosed with “mild whiplash.”
As for the detainee, he is a 39-year-old man, who according to witnesses pushed Frederiksen. He was immediately arrested and will be brought to justice this Saturday. It will be the judge who determines if there are grounds to order preventive detention against him.
Reactions of condemnation to aggression
It did not take long for the first condemnations of the attack suffered by Frederiksen to be issued. Her vice president and Minister of Defense, the liberal Troels Lund Poulsen, has used the social network X to send his “best thoughts” to the prime minister after writing that his country is not like that and in Denmark prime ministers are not attacked .
For his part, the Minister of the Environment, Magnus Heunicke, has confessed that the attack has shaken them all, while he has stressed that an event like this cannot happen in his country and has called for citizen responsibility.
Similarly, the Danish Minister of Finance has called the attack “terrible”, while the Minister of Culture has defended that “any attack on an elected politician is an attack on all democracy.” The opposition leader of the Denmark Democrats party, Inger Stojberg, has also condemned the attack.
Condemnations also from the main European leaders
At the European level there has also been no shortage of condemnations of this attack. The president of the European Commission and candidate of the European People’s Party, Ursula von der Leyen, has also used the social network X to condemn this “despicable” act she has written and to send her best wishes to Mette Frederiksen.
He has also done so to the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, who has described the news as “appalling” and has defended that “violence has no place in politics.”
For his part, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has called what happened a “horrendous attack”, while writing that he feels “outraged”.
Outside the European institutions they are numerous condemnations of other community leaders such as the acting Prime Minister of the Netherlands, the Czech Prime Minister, the Chancellor of Austria, the Greek Prime Minister, the President of the Government Pedro Sánchez or the Italian Giorgia Meloni.
The Danish Prime Minister, 46, has been in office since June 2019 and the attack against her has occurred weeks after Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and wounded in what was the first assassination attempt on a European political leader in two decades.
