Mette Frederiksen

Biography

Mette Frederiksen was born in Aalborg in 1977, the daughter of a typographer and a teacher. She was politically active as a teenager, studied administration and social sciences at Aalborg University and African studies at the University of Copenhagen, and worked as a youth consultant for the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO).

She entered the Folketing for the Social Democrats in 2001 and served as the party's spokesperson on culture and later on social affairs. In Helle Thorning-Schmidt's governments she was Minister of Employment from 2011 to 2014, when she pursued reforms of early retirement and cash benefits, and Minister of Justice from 2014 to 2015. After the party lost power in 2015 she succeeded Thorning-Schmidt as party leader.

Frederiksen led the centre-left bloc to victory in the 2019 election and became Denmark's youngest prime minister. Her first government handled the COVID-19 pandemic and the mink cull, for which a commission criticised the government. After the 2022 election she formed a cross-bloc coalition with Venstre and the Moderates. Her governments combined strict immigration policy with climate legislation, raised defence spending sharply after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, ended Denmark's EU defence opt-out, and rejected US pressure to acquire Greenland. Her party again finished first in the 2026 election.