Denmark’s “ghetto law”, which allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in areas where at least half of residents have a “non-western” background, constitutes direct discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin, a senior adviser to the EU’s top court has found.
Danish social housing law categorises neighbourhoods on the basis of unemployment, crime, education, income and immigrant population. Those where more than 50% of residents are from a “non-western” backgrounds are labelled a “parallel society”, formerly referred to as a “ghetto”.
