History

A brief history of the Prime Minister’s Office

The history of the Prime Minister’s Office dates back to the system change in 1848. At that time the first prime minister, then called “council president”, was appointed. See also Prime ministers since 1848. The small secretariat that was established to service the council president, the Council Presidium, was the predecessor to the Prime Minister’s Office that we know today.

From its beginning, the council presidium dealt with tasks regarding constitutional issues, setting the number of ministers, distributing tasks between them and dealing with cases regarding the Royal Family and the parliament.

However, the 1st of January 1914 is considered the Prime Minister’s Office founding date, when a department was established under the Prime Minister. The Council Presidium was thus formally organised as a ministry and the foundation was laid for what we today call the Prime Minister’s Office.

Until then, the Prime Minister had to rely on civil servants from the ministries. The Prime Minister was usually also a departmental minister. This practice continued until 1934. For example, Thorvald Stauning was also Minister for Trade and Industry and later Minister of Defence at the same time as he was Prime Minister.

The terms Prime Minister and Prime Minister’s Office were introduced in 1918. Carl Theodor, a member of the Danish Social-Liberal Party, was the first Danish head of government who was called Prime Minister.

Since the establishment of the Prime Minister’s Office in 1914, it has undergone development both in terms of employees and tasks. The figure below shows how the number of employees has grown since 1914:

We will briefly describe below how tasks and staff of the Prime Minister’s Office have developed since the ministry was established in 1914.

1914-1919 – The first five years

On 1 January 1914, the staff of the Prime Minister’s Office consisted of the Permanent Secretary of State, Dr. Phil. Erik Arup, messenger Sophus Frost and secretary Elsa Lidell. The three employees had two rooms at their disposal. In addition, they had the latest technical aids: There was a telephone installed and a typewriter had also been purchased!

The key responsibilities of the Prime Minister’s Office were the constitution, the Royal Family, the ministers and the parliament. These tasks are still part of responsibilities of the Prime Minister’s Office today.

1919-1938 – The Prime Minister’s Office gets more responsibilities

Frederik Valdemar Petersen was the Permanent Secretary of State in Prime Minister’s Office from 1919 to 1938. He endeavoured to strengthen the ministry by expanding the departmental responsibilities and administration.

More tasks and more employees in the Prime Minister’s Office paved the way for the Prime Minister to remain “only” Prime Minister.

Stauning wrote an article in the newspaper, the Social Democrat, in 1929 about “What it’s like to be a Prime Minister”. Here he stated that it could be “predicted, that in a not so distant future, the Prime Minister will have to relinquish running a departmental ministry”

When a government was formed on the 4th November 1935, Stauning refrained from taking on a departmental ministry in addition to the post as Prime Minister. A new tradition was thus introduced that gave the Prime Minister more time to manage the government.

1938-1962 – A “mixed bag”

After Erik Valdemar Petersen’s departure from the position of Permanent Secretary of State, his successor continued the efforts to strengthen the department. By 1955, the number of employees had quintupled in relation to 1914 to a total of 15 staff.

The Prime Minister’s Office also acquired new responsibilities over the years. However, on a number of occasions the ministry had to give up both departmental responsibility and personnel when new ministries were established. For example, in 1955 when the Ministry for Greenland was established.

The office’s responsibilities were expanded over 50 years whenever an occasion arose. This meant that at the beginning of the 1960’s the office’s responsibilities were very diverse and included both large and small areas.

The responsibilities of the Prime Minister’s Office ranged from constitutional issues, cases regarding the national coat of arms and the beach parks at Bellevue and Charlottenlund.

In the book referred to below, “The Prime Minister’s Office over 75 years”, August Wiemann Eriksen from the Danish State Archives referred to the responsibilities of the Prime Minister’s Office’s during that period as a ”mixed bag”.

1964 – Reform of the Prime Minister's office

The secretariat and the department were located at two different addresses until 1980. In 1980 the two parts of the ministry were gathered at one address, Christiansborg Castle, where the Prime Minister’s Office is located today. You can take a tour of the Prime Minister’s Office by clicking on the link “Tour of the Prime Minister’s Office”.

When the Ministry for Greenland was closed in 1987, the cases concerning Greenland were returned to the Prime Minister’s Office. This is also reflected in the number of employees in the ministry, which grew at the end of the 1980s with the transfer of the new tasks from the closed Ministry for Greenland.

The Prime Minister’s Office today

In 1994, the organisation of the Prime Minister’s Office was streamlined further and the staff was expanded.

The ministry was divided into three main areas. A foreign policy area, a domestic policy area and a third area dealing with legal matters, etc. Today these three areas are supplemented by a Climate Secretariat and an administrative area, cf. also tasks and organisation of the Prime Minister’s Office.

As a new principle, almost all academics in the Prime Minister’s Office were employed with limited tenure. This principle is retained today and most of the academic staff at the Prime Minister’s Office are employed on limited tenure contracts for 2-5 years and are typically recruited from one of the other ministries. This gives a far more dynamic organisation than was the case before 1994, where the academic staff often worked for 20-30 years in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Prime Minister’s Office currently has a basic staff of about 80 employees. Unlike other ministries, the ministry does not have responsibility for large agencies or directorates. However, the two high commissioners for the Faroe Islands and Greenland respectively are the responsibility of the Prime Minister’s Office. The total number of employees in the Prime Minister’s Office is therefore about 100.

The Prime Minister’s Office also differs considerably from the other ministries, both with regard to its tasks and its size, even though both the tasks and the staff have grown considerably since the ministry’s first three employees, Arup, Frost and Fidell, moved in, in 1914.

Literature

The information above about the history of the Prime Minister’s Office is based on, among other sources, the chapter "Traits of the history of the Prime Minister’s Office” by August Wiemann Eriksen from the jubilee book “The Prime Minister’s Office over 75 years”, 1989, the Prime Minister’s Office jubilee committee. Copenhagen: Bianco Luno

You can also read about the history and the offices of the Prime Minister’s Office in:

”Borgen. Christiansborg 100 years”, 2007, Thomas Larsen, Bjarne Steensbeck and Bjarke Ørsted. Gyldendal.

”Christiansborg Slot”, 1975, Kristian Hvidt, Svend Ellehøj & Otto Horn (ed.). Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag.

The literature above is only available in Danish.