Erik Ninn-Hansen

Erik Ninn-Hansen (born April 12, 1922 in Skørpinge Sogn , Zealand ; † September 20, 2014 ) was a Danish lawyer and politician for the Conservative People's Party . As Minister of Defense, Finance and Justice, he was a member of several governments and, as President of Parliament, headed the Folketing . As Justice Minister, he was guilty of perversion of justice when he thwarted family reunification of Tamil refugees . For this, the Danish Imperial Court (Rigsretten) sentenced him to a suspended sentence in 1995 .

Life

Early political engagement, World War II and studies

Ninn-Hansen's interest in politics was aroused as a schoolboy, and he became chairman of the Association of Conservative High School Students in Slagelse . In 1939 he became a board member of the Conservative Ungdom (KU), the youth association of the Conservative Party. He joined the political course of Aksel Møller , chairman of the Conservative Student Union and later parliamentary group leader in the Folketing. Together they shaped the cooperation with other political youth organizations during the German occupation of Denmark . In 1940 he became local chairman of Dansk Ungdomssamvirke in Skørpinge, an anti-Nazi cooperation of youth organizations with different orientations.

After graduating from high school , he began studying law at the University of Copenhagen in 1941 , which he finished in 1948. During his studies he was chairman of the Conservative Student Union from 1942 to 1945 and a member of the Senate of Student Union from 1945 to 1947. Between 1947 and 1952 he was a member of the executive board of the newly founded People's Education Association (Folkeligt Oplysningsforbund) and from 1948 to 1950 he was state chairman of KU. After completing his studies, from 1948 to 1955 he was secretary at Østre Landsret , the appellate court responsible for eastern Denmark .

Lawyer and MP

Admitted to the bar in 1952, he took up a position as a lawyer in 1954 and ran his own law firm between 1955 and 1968.

Ninn-Hansen ran unsuccessfully for parliament in the election of September 5, 1950 in the constituency of Kerteminde. In the subsequent election on April 21, 1953 , he moved into the Folketing and represented the Sorø constituency there until the 1960 Folketing election . Under the group chairman Aksel Møller (1955 to 1958) he worked as the group's secretary. In 1957 he became a member of the Committee for Greenland and participated in commissions and legislative initiatives for the self-government of Greenland.

In 1960 Ninn-Hansen was re-elected in the Slagelse constituency, and in 1971 in the Odense Syd og Vest constituency.

minister

Defense Minister and Armed Forces Reform

After the Folketing election of January 23, 1968 , a bourgeois coalition government consisting of Det Radikalische Venstre , Der Konservative Folkeparti and Venstre was formed under Prime Minister Hilmar Baunsgaard . Ninn-Hansen took up the post of Defense Minister on February 2, 1968 and held it until he moved to the Ministry of Finance on March 17, 1971.

In doing so, he had to overcome the different defense policy views of the three coalition partners and at the same time accept a reduction in the defense budget of 125 million crowns . Ultimately, the government agreed on a reform package in 1969: a high command of the three armed forces was formed, general military service was set for twelve months, and sergeants' regular service now ended at 45 years of age. All rank groups and conscripts in the defense commissions were included in the decisions.

In addition, Ninn-Hansen implemented several rationalization measures and personnel cuts in the Danish Armed Forces (Det Danske Forsvar) , which also included the naval shipyards and ammunition arsenals. During his ministerial tenure, military areas in Copenhagen were also released by relocating locations to the surrounding area.

However, there were also protests, for example at the planned relocation of the Army Material Command to Hjørring and the traditional Bådsmandsstrædes barracks in Christianshavn . Frederikshavn became the main base of the Royal Navy, while Korsør became a naval base and Copenhagen's Holmen naval arsenal.

Finance minister

On March 17, 1971, Ninn-Hansen was appointed Minister of Finance by Prime Minister Baunsgaard as the successor to the sick Poul Møller ; he held this office until the Baunsgaard government left on October 11, 1971. As early as 1969 he had to represent the finance minister because of illness and was involved in the introduction of the flat tax for 1970.

Group leader and party crisis

After the death of Interior Minister Poul Clorius Sørensen on June 29, 1969 and the departure of Poul Møller from the government and the Folketing, Ninn-Hansen became parliamentary group leader and top candidate of his party in the Folketing election on September 21, 1971.

Conservative voters' dissatisfaction with the party's work in the VKR government and the overall government balance resulted in the Conservatives losing six of their 37 seats in the 1971 election. The coalition thus missed a majority, so that the social democrat Jens Otto Krag could again become Prime Minister.

In the period that followed, criticism of Ninn-Hansen and his work as parliamentary group leader grew, especially in the conservative press. Inside the party, there were also differences of opinion between Ninn-Hansen, who called for a more conservative orientation, and party chairman Erik Haunstrup Clemmensen , who campaigned for selective cooperation with the Social Democrats.

Initially, Ninn-Hansen was able to prevail, he relied on a new edition of the VKR coalition after the next election. However, the Conservative Party suffered a severe defeat in the Folketing election on December 4, 1973 and lost almost half of its seats in parliament. At the same time, the possibility of a bourgeois majority was destroyed, so that Poul Hartling formed a liberal minority government that consisted only of ministers from the Venstre.

The election results and the reshuffle of the government were a bitter disappointment and severe personal defeat for Ninn-Hansen, so that in 1974 he resigned as parliamentary group leader and political leader of the Conservative People's Party. After party chairman Haunstrup Clemmensen also resigned, Poul Schlüter took over both functions shortly afterwards .

Minister of Justice, Speaker of Parliament and Tamil legends

In the following years, he campaigned for broad-based coalition governments in times of government crises.

On December 10, 1982, a four-party government consisting of Conservatives, Venstre, Center Democrats and Christian Democrats (so-called Firkløverregeringen , "Lucky Clover Government") was formed under Prime Minister Poul Schlueter. Ninn-Hansen became Minister of Justice and held this post for more than six years until he was replaced by Hans Peter Clausen on January 10, 1989.

During his tenure as Minister of Justice in 1983, the individual right of asylum was recognized as a human right.

Subsequently, on January 10, 1989, Ninn-Hansen succeeded Svend Jakobsen as President of the Folketing. On October 3, 1989, however, he resigned from the office of President of Parliament and handed this over to Hans Peter Clausen. The reason for the resignation was the strong criticism of his office as Minister of Justice: Although the foreigners legislation allowed the family reunification of refugees , he had instructed the authorities, referring to the situation in Sri Lanka, to refuse reunification of Tamil families. The scandal (Tamil legends) led to the fall of the Schlueter government on January 25, 1993.

Shortly afterwards, proceedings against Ninn-Hansen were brought before the Reich Court. A ministerial charge is heard before a special body made up of fifteen members of the Folketing and fifteen judges from the Supreme Court ( Højesteret ). In 1995 the court ruled that Minister Ninn-Hansen had violated the law and issued a suspended sentence of four months. It was only the second conviction of a minister since the Imperial Court was founded in 1849.

Publications

• Syv år for VKR , 1974
• Værelse 28 - Dansk politik 1974-1994 , 1997

Web links

• Entry in Den Store Danske Encyklopædi (online version)
• Entry in the store Danske (online version II)
• Ninn - Halvfems, ensom og bitter . In: Berlingske of April 11, 2012
• Erik Ninn-Hansen he flyttet i ældrebolig. He efterhånden meget dårligt gående the better conservative minister of justice . In: Billed Bladet

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erik Ninn-Hansen er død , Berlingske . 29th September 2014. 
2. ↑ Tamil say 1986-1995 (Danmarks histories)
3. ↑ Tamil Tell (Den Store Danske)
4. ↑ Rigsretten (Den Store Danske)