It’s election season - here’s everything you need to know

The candidates for election in this year’s municipal and regional council elections smile down at you from the posters on lampposts and fences all over town.  And on campus, the candidates for election to AU’s different councils and boards are vying for your attention from windows and notices boards. 

Municipal and regional council elections all over Denmark will take place on November 16th. And at Aarhus University, the annual elections will take place over four days starting on November 5th. 

But do any of these three elections mean anything for you as an international student or staff member - and can you vote? 

Let’s start with the most local of the three: the AU university elections. This year, students and PhD students are eligible to vote. This also applies to international students (full-time or part-time) and PhD students. 

What’s at stake this year is who will represent students on the AU board, which is the university’s highest authority. Students are also electing representatives to their academic councils and boards of studies. In other words, students will decide who will represent their interests at the highest level of management, at faculty level and at degree programme level. 

PhD students will elect representatives to the PhD committees - and depending on what kind of PhD programme they’re enrolled in, they may also be eligible to vote for representatives to the other bodies as well. 

The municipal elections 

The candidates in the municipal elections are running for election to the city council (or the municipal council, as this body is called in many municipalities). The city council manages and allocates the municipal budget. In Denmark, the municipalities are responsible for a lot of services that impact daily life, such as operating daycare centres, the public primary and secondary school system and nursing homes; they also handle local traffic and infrastructure and urban planning and development. 

The universities are not municipal institutions; they are part of the state. Nonetheless, the City of Aarhus is responsible for ensuring that Aarhus is an attractive place to study, for example by ensuring that there’s adequate student housing.

The regional council elections

The regional council elections are about which politicians will sit on the regional council in your region - which, if you live in Aarhus, is Central Denmark Region. In Denmark, the regions are responsible for operating the healthcare system, including emergency preparedness and the Covid response. The regions also have tasks related to education (particularly upper secondary schools), development, culture, the environment and collective transportation.   

Can you vote?

As an international student or staff member, you are eligible to vote in the municipal and regional council elections: in Aarhus, this means you can vote for candidates to the Aarhus City Council and the regional council for Central Denmark Region. To be eligible to vote, you have to be at least 18 years old, have permanent residence in the municipality and either be a citizen of an EU country, Norway or Iceland or have resided in the municipality without interruption for the last four years. 

A transitional arrangement applies to British citizens as a consequence of Brexit. If you are a British citizen residing in Denmark on January 31st and have lived here continuously since then, you can vote in the municipal elections. British citizens who moved to Denmark after January 31st 2020 can earn the right to vote after living in Denmark without interruption for four years.

You’ll find information about what candidates are running in these elections on the websites of your municipality and region.

Why do the elections matter?

The board

The board is Aarhus University’s highest governing body and works to advance the university’s interests as an institution of research and education. The board approves AU’s budget and strategy and appoints the university’s rector. Five of the eleven board members are internal members elected in the university elections. Two of the internal members are students, elected for a two-year period. However, in the 2021 university elections, only one student representative is up for election for a one-year period, due to the transition to new election rules. Three members of the board are employees elected for a four-year period, one of whom is elected from among the technical-administrative staff, and two of whom are elected from among the academic staff.

Boards of studies

The board of studies are responsible for things like drafting academic regulations and ensuring that teaching evaluations are followed up on.

Academic councils

And academic council exists to ensure that students and staff are included in discussions of academic conditions at the faculty and that they have an influence on these conditions.

PhD committees

A PhD committee works to ensure the quality of a faculty’s PhD programme’s course offerings and ensuring the quality of PhD supervision, among other things.

• Read more: Get to know AU – one bite at a time

Translated by Lenore Messick