Jeppe Kofod


Jeppe Sebastian Kofod is a Danish Social Democratic politician who has been serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark since 27 June 2019. Until then he was a Member of the European Parliament from Denmark as a member of the Party of European Socialists since 25 May 2014. He then also was the leader of the Social Democrat Group in the European Parliament.
Kofod was a member of Danish Parliament from the Social Democrats from 1998 until 2014, where he was the lead candidate for the Social Democrats in the 2014 European Parliament election in Denmark.

Education

From 2006 to 2007 Kofod completed a Master in Public Administration at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Political career

Member of the Danish Parliament, 1998-2014

Jeppe Kofod was a Member of the Danish Parliament, the Folketing, first elected after the 1998 Danish general election for the constituency of Bornholm. During his time in the Danish Parliament he served as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
In 2008, Kofod resigned as foreign policy spokesman for the Social Democrats after being found to have had sex with a 15-year-old member of the youth wing of the political party. Kofod was 34 years old at the time. Denmark's age of consent is 15. He commented at the time that he had shown a 'lack of judgment' in having a 'morally inappropriate relationship'. The incident had occurred at a party after a Social Democratic Youth of Denmark event on 21 March 2008 at the University of Southern Denmark.

Member of the European Parliament, 2014–2019

Kofod was the head of the Danish Socialists and Democrats' delegation and Vice-President of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. Serving his first term, he was elected to the European Parliament at the 2014 European Parliament election, with a total of 170.739 personal votes. He was re-elected in 2019.
During his time in the European Parliament, Kofod served on the following Committees and Delegations:
In addition to his committee assignments, Kofod was a member of the following intergroups in the European Parliament:
Kofod was also a supporter of the MEP Heart Group, a group of parliamentarians who have an interest in promoting measures that help reduce the burden of cardiovascular diseases. He sat on the Executive Committee of the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa.

Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2019–present

On 27 June 2019, Kofod was named Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Frederiksen Cabinet.
Early during his tenure, Kofod and Frederiksen faced a diplomatic incident when U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed his interest in buying Greenland from Denmark; at the time, Kofod said the island could not be bought “in dollars, yuan or roubles”. He later approved the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, which was widely seen as part of a broader move by the U.S. to expand its diplomatic and commercial presence in Greenland and the Arctic. In 2020, he welcomed a $12.1 million economic aid package from the U.S. government for Greenland.