Two years ago, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen commissioned a study which was supposed to come up with welfare reform ideas. Rasmussen, the author of a book entitled From Welfare State to Minimal State came to power in 2001 and was reelected this year. He has conceded for some time that the welfare state needs reforms.

This week the commission published its final report. The result is – to put it mildly – a disaster. Very few of the reform proposals depart from the basic premises of the flawed Scandinavian model. In fact the Commission itself has stated that it aimed to present a reform proposal based on the core values of the Danish society – these values apparently being the preservation of the welfare state.

Of course this was to be expected. Too few Danes (or, for that matter, other Europeans) realize that the best thing to do for future generations is not to make small adjustments to the welfare model, but to abolish it. What Denmark and the rest of the Nordic countries need are reforms which empower the citiziens. We need large scale healthcare reform and a major change in the welfare system in order to make people responsible for their own lives.

No-one will deny that such reforms take time. This is the truly sad part about the Danish welfare commission, because after 2 years of hard work and several million Euros of tax payer money, the response of the Danish Prime Minister was a rejection of the majority of the proposed reforms. He apparently managed to read the 900 pages of the report in about 2 hours (there was, however, a 50 page executive summary), before declaring, without further discussion or consideration: “I can already say that there are two issues we find interesting and the suggestions concerning tax reform and co-payments are not government policy under any circumstance.”

One might have expected such a reaction from a Social Democrat, but not from a European Liberal. Rasmussen has been criticised by business leaders and by his own voters for not wanting to discuss the proposed reforms. The two proposals Rasmussen is willing to accept are raising the retirement age and making it easier for highly skilled foreigners to immigrate to Denmark. Last Friday, a survey revealed that almost half of the Liberal Party voters want tax reform. The poll, published by the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, revealed that 49% of the Liberal voters want an income tax cut in exchange for higher property taxes, while 42% oppose this.

Rasmussen has also been criticised by his coalition partner. The Conservative Party leader Bendt Bendtsen, who is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Affairs, urged Rasmussen to accept more of the commission's 43 recommendations for  reforming the welfare state. “There is a need for more ambition. Politicians think forward to the next election. Statesmen think forward to the next generation,” Bendtsen said. Business leaders from some of Denmark’s most prominent companies also said that the government needed to go even further than the commission suggested.

Fortunately, an ever increasing number of think tanks and advocacy groups in Europe, including Denmark, are pushing public policy debate towards freer markets and genuine reforms. In the long run this will also benefit Americans, because it will help reduce the export of bad policy ideas that Europe, and especially Scandinavia, is known for.