At the end of December 2023, the office of the Ombudsman in Denmark (Folketingets Ombudsman) has concluded reviewing a case regarding a Danish authority’s refusal to provide basic social assistance, because they did not have a Danish bank account, with a designated ‘NemKonto’, which is a form of nominated account in Denmark as marked in a publicly-managed register.
In the case in which the Ombudsman had investigated on a basis of a complaint made to the office by a person after the Municipality of Copenhagen (Københavns Kommune) had refused an entitled person to the cash payment so they he could purchase a sleeping bag.
The practice of local authorities (kommune) has been that they would withhold cash payments until a person got a NemKonto, or alternatively, that it would be given to a designated relative with a NemKonto.
The Ombudsman found that, on the basis of current legislation in Denmark, it must be possible for a person to receive payments from the public sector such as basic social assistance in the form of cash payments, even if the entitled person does not have a designated Danish bank account, nor has a bank account at all; and does not want the money to be transferred to a third-party account either.
Accordingly, the Ombudsman has established that, on the basis of current legislation, public authorities in Denmark must ensure that the cash payments can be made in another way, for example, in the form of cash. A public authority cannot suspend the payment of a person’s entitlement until they open a Danish bank account.
Whilst there was no explicit cross-border aspect to this case, there are obvious issues here under EU law. Banking services have the possibility to be provided on a cross-border basis. If you have a bank account in another Member State, it cannot be a ‘NemKonto’ according to Danish public authorities. Thus, if bank account details were provided to a public authority, and was not a NemKonto account, the logic would follow that the public authority must lodge the basic social assistance to that account. Otherwise, it would infringe upon an entitled person’s right to receive services under EU free movement law.
A copy of the case, and the letter of the Ombudsman to the anonymised individual who had complained can be found here.