Pasta kødsovs har forfulgt Mette Frederiksen siden sidste valg

·25 min·2 clips

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announces a 4.5 billion kroner food check in her New Year's speech amid rising food prices.

1. Altinget Ajour food editor Dorte Ibsen Bodum analyses the political history of food prices in Denmark, centred on Mette Frederiksen's spaghetti-bolognese promise and its implications ahead of the 2026 election. 2. Host Karoline Tranberg conducts the interview, framing it around Frederiksen's New Year's 2026 speech in which she acknowledged the government had failed to address rising food prices adequately. 3. The episode's core thesis is that the spaghetti-and-meat-sauce symbol Frederiksen herself introduced in the 2022 campaign has now become a political liability because meat prices have risen sharply anyway. 4. In the 2022 election campaign, Frederiksen repeatedly used pasta bolognese to argue that an agricultural CO2 tax must not make everyday food unaffordable for an 'ordinary mother with three children going to football.' 5. A major three-party climate agreement was subsequently reached that placed the CO2 charge on farmers rather than retail consumers, meaning the price at the checkout would theoretically be shielded. 6. Economist Michael Svare is cited by Bodum as having demonstrated in an analysis that even with the farm-level CO2 charge, the effect on the retail price of minced beef would not be significant. 7. Despite this, 800 grams of minced beef now costs 115 kroner — a price Bodum calls 'extremely, extremely expensive' — and opponents including Inger Støjberg and Dansk Folkeparti attribute the rise to agricultural uncertainty created by the green transition. 8. Dansk Folkeparti sold party merchandise reading 'Pasta Kødsovs' at their national conference as a direct taunt to Frederiksen, and served pasta bolognese at their August summer group meeting in Aarhus. 9. The government's earlier food-price measures — removing excise duties on chocolate, snacks, coffee, and electricity, and reducing day-care costs — were criticised as helping people spend more freely without specifically targeting expensive healthy foods like fruit, vegetables, or meat. 10. Bodum notes the political irony that the excise duty on sugar and chocolate was one that economists and business groups had lobbied to remove for roughly ten years, and the government used the food-price moment to finally act on that. 11. In her New Year's speech on January 1, 2026, Frederiksen stated: 'We have not done enough in relation to the high food prices,' and proposed both a short-term food check and a longer-term VAT reform. 12. The proposed food check is described as targeted at pensioners without large assets, unemployed people, and families with children who are economically pressed. 13. If VAT on fruit and vegetables were removed entirely, Skat calculates a family of two adults and two children would save approximately 1,400 kroner per year — about 100 kroner per month. 14. Skat analysis further shows the top income decile would gain almost twice as much in absolute kroner terms as the bottom income decile, making the measure regressive. 15. Skat has said its current IT systems for administering differentiated VAT are outdated and will not be replaced until 2030, meaning any change would take at least two years from decision to implementation. 16. The governing Social Democrats, the moderates, and other parties have not agreed on whether to remove VAT on fruit and vegetables specifically or to reduce food VAT more generally, or on how much to spend. 17. Bodum describes Frederiksen's New Year's speech as more 'humiliating' than her previous posture — a departure from the 'live with it' style — and says it signals the government is responding to voters rather than managing them. 18. The tone of the episode is analytical and sceptical, with Bodum repeatedly cataloguing weaknesses in each proposed measure alongside their political logic. 19. Listeners following Danish election politics or food-price policy debates will find this episode closely argued and well-sourced. 20. Listeners outside Denmark or unfamiliar with Danish fiscal policy will find the VAT and excise discussion requires background knowledge.

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