The sentence requires changes to the food check: include apprentices, exclude millionaire families.

The government’s food voucher proposal should not benefit stay-at-home parents with million-dollar incomes, band members, or pensioners living abroad—it should instead target apprentices earning between 10,000 and 18,000 Danish kroner per month.

While the Danish People’s Party, Liberal Alliance, Conservatives, and the New Right oppose the government’s food voucher plan—with several parties calling it bribery (https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/efter-kritik-regeringen-vil-meget-snart-indkalde-til-forhandlinger-om-kritiseret-foedevarecheck)—they have now presented a set of joint proposals aimed at improving the tax-free payment for around two million Danes.

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Here are the blue parties’ five proposed changes to the food voucher

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* Apprentices are added and aligned with recipients of SU (state education grant)

* Families with a household income exceeding one million Danish kroner are excluded from the proposal

* Only Danish citizens, as well as EU and EEA nationals, can receive the voucher

* Pensioners living abroad are removed from the proposal

* Members of criminal gangs are excluded from the proposal

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Blue parties want food vouchers for apprentices

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Under the government’s proposal, students receiving SU—set at 7,426 Danish kroner per month—are entitled to a food voucher worth 1,000 Danish kroner.

However, this does not apply to young people undergoing apprenticeships who receive an apprentice wage instead.

Apprentices earn between 10,000 and 18,000 Danish kroner per month, depending on the collective agreement governing their trade. According to Morten Messerschmidt, leader of the Danish People’s Party, this should also qualify them for a food voucher.

“Apprentice wages are generally very low compared to regular salaries,” he says. “Apprentices are often further along in life than many university students, so they may have started families and have fixed expenses, making them particularly vulnerable to rising food prices.”

Peter Faber, the Danish Metal Federation’s secretary responsible for education, agrees with this assessment.

“While we support students on SU, we fail to consider apprentices who have chosen vocational training,” he says. “That’s deeply unfair.”

Peter Faber from Dansk Metal questions why apprentices are not included in the food voucher agreement. (Photo: © Alexander Østerlin Koch, DR)

The exclusion of apprentices is puzzling, Faber says, especially since the government has repeatedly emphasized the need for more people to pursue vocational education (https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/i-aarevis-har-det-vaeret-et-maal-flere-ind-paa-erhvervsskolerne-uden-held-oekonomisk).

“We’ve been advocating for more people to take skilled vocational training,” Faber says. “Yet it’s precisely those young people who actually choose vocational education who are being penalized here.”

According to Benny Engelbrecht, the Social Democrats’ finance spokesperson, the government has prioritized using “traditional payment methods.” This is because SU is a public benefit, and there is already an established registry of SU recipients. Including apprentices would therefore take too long.

“By doing it this way, the money can be distributed quickly and take effect within a few months,” he says. “If we had to create new payment categories and boundaries, it would drag on for much longer.”

Additionally, apprentice wages are higher than the SU rate.

“I have great sympathy for apprentices,” Engelbrecht says. “But the reality is that their collective agreement-based base wage is higher than what an SU recipient gets.”

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No vouchers for gang members, non-Western immigrants, or millionaire households

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While the blue parties want to extend the scheme to apprentices, they also believe that several groups currently eligible under the government’s proposal should not receive the food voucher.

This includes parents with children under 18 who had an annual income below 475,300 Danish kroner in 2025 but live in a household with a total income exceeding one million Danish kroner.

“I find it outrageous that such vouchers are being distributed to millionaire households,” says Morten Messerschmidt (DF).

According to the Social Democrats’ Benny Engelbrecht, this is simply how the system is structured.

> “I find it outrageous that such vouchers are being distributed to millionaire households”

> Morten Messerschmidt

“The same principle applies to child benefit payments,” he says. “We’ve designed it so that individual parents’ incomes are considered. We look at the mother and father separately.”

The blue parties also propose that pensioners living abroad should not be eligible for the food voucher.

“We believe that the responsibility lies with those who reside in Denmark,” Messerschmidt says. “Those affected by Danish price increases should be the ones to benefit.”

But this would raise new issues, Engelbrecht argues.

“That’s a valid point,” he says. “But we must also ask whether a pensioner who worked as a teacher in the Danish school in Southern Schleswig and now lives in Southern Schleswig—having earned the right to Danish state pension—should really be denied the same voucher as a Danish pensioner living just 20 kilometers north of the border?”

Furthermore, the blue parties argue that non-Western immigrants should not be eligible for the food voucher.

“The Danish welfare system is designed to help Danish citizens,” Messerschmidt says. “It’s not a social office for the third world, so we believe this benefit should be reserved for Danish nationals.”

Engelbrecht defends the government’s proposal on this point as well.

“If you live in Denmark and have earned the right to a transfer income, you must have resided here for a significant period,” he says. “For example, to qualify for state pension, you need to have lived and worked in Denmark for 40 years—and thus also be eligible for a food voucher.”

> “I’m surprised that the parties didn’t actively participate in the negotiations if they had concrete demands”

> Benny Engelbrecht

Overall, Engelbrecht has little patience for the blue parties’ proposed changes.

“If they had concrete demands, I’m surprised they didn’t actively participate in the negotiations,” he says.

“I see this as an attempt to simply drag things out,” the finance spokesperson adds.

The blue parties will present their proposed amendments in the Folketing today, as the government’s food voucher bill is first debated.

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