Denmark:The election result in one of the least hospitable places to outsiders sits easily in a continent where national migration debates have taken on an anxious, if not hostile, tone, writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, Migration Correspondent
Last week was kind to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark's liberal prime minister. He defeated the social democrats in an election he didn't need to call until 2009. Having made history by becoming the first of his movement's leaders to be re-elected, in 2005, he has now repeated the feat.
He enters a third term with unemployment at its lowest point in 33 years and an economy that is one of Europe's strongest.
Mr Rasmussen called the election early to ride the auspicious economic wave and strengthen his mandate before potentially difficult negotiations on public sector pay. He succeeded, if only just.
The prime minister's liberal-conservative coalition and its allies won 89 seats in the 179-seat parliament, only sealing a majority with the help of a small centre-right party that took one of the two seats in the Danish territory of the Faroe Islands.
Confounding many who speculated that voters uneasy with Denmark's reputation as one of Europe's least hospitable places to outsiders would turn away from the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party, Pia Kjaersgaard's party actually increased its share of the vote.
It will fill 25 seats in the Folketing (Denmark's parliament) and, with the ruling coalition depending on it for support, will continue to influence policy.
After the result was confirmed, Mr Rasmussen told supporters he would seek "a broad majority" in parliament. This could include the New Alliance, a party founded earlier this year by the Syrian-born Naser Khader, a prominent Muslim leader who supported Denmark's position during the 2005 cartoon crisis against the opposition of much of the Muslim world.
During the election campaign New Alliance did not say that it would support Mr Rasmussen's party, but its raison d'etre is to counter the influence of the DPP and push for an easing of immigration rules and more humane treatment of asylum seekers.
Just as many underestimated the DPP's resilience, however, they overestimated support for the New Alliance. The party secured only five seats and, while Mr Rasmussen speaks of a broad coalition, he knows that to include the new party could unsettle a coalition that can manage without its support.
Is it hard to imagine the DPP and New Alliance collaborating. During the campaign, a DPP poster showed veiled Muslim women under the slogan: "Follow the country's traditions and customs or leave." Another poster showed the World Trade Center in flames, with the words: "Tolerance is Danish; Fanaticism isn't."
"I wouldn't call my party anti-immigration. I'd rather call it an anti-Islamic party if I had to say anti- anything," People's Party MP Morten Messerschmidt told this writer last June. "The problem is that we are facing migration from countries which are culturally, mentally, socially at a different place from Denmark and Europe."
Denmark has some of the most stringent immigration rules in Europe. Since the 2001 election, when the DPP first gained enough seats to influence the government, the number of residence permits issued to refugees or their relatives has been cut by a factor of four.
Under Mr Rasmussen, the number of foreigners granted asylum in Denmark fell almost 80 per cent to 1,095 in 2006 from 5,156 in 2000.
What does the election result tell us about the mood towards immigrants in Denmark? Although some tried to turn it into a vote on the asylum process, opinion polls show voters were more interested in other issues, mainly economic ones.
But as Ulf Hedetoft, professor of international studies at Aalborg University, has said, the outgoing government owed its life to the question of immigration, and the country's strict immigration rules actually pre-date the DPP's rise to the position of powerbroker. A policy shift is unlikely.
Increasingly, Copenhagen's rhetoric sits easily in a continent where national migration debates have taken on an anxious, if not hostile, tone.
The British government, spooked by opposition charges of weakness on the issue, has been keen to show its nativist impulses by promising more jobs for British workers.
Last month the Swiss People's Party trounced the opposition with promises to deport immigrants who commit crimes and to ban the building of mosque minarets.
And in Italy, the death of a woman following her assault by a Romanian immigrant led to a ratcheting up of right-wing vitriol and a government promise to deport Romanians deemed to be a social menace. Against that background, outside pressure on Denmark to ease its own regime is unlikely to grow.