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On June 26, 2025, the Danish government and opposition parties approved a political agreement on protecting Danes’ physical traits, including facial features and voices, from being fabricated in videos or other digital media. Under the agreement, the political parties undertake to support legislative amendments to the copyright act that will allow natural persons to order the removal of such “deepfake” content from online platforms.

The governing coalition in Denmark includes the Social Democrats, Liberals, and Moderates. The opposition consists of the Denmark Democrats, Green Left, Conservative People’s, Red Green Alliance, Danish Social Liberal, and Alternative parties.

Agreement

The agreement specifies that the political parties agree to create legislation that protects against sharing digital imitations of personal characteristics by amending the copyright legislation—specifically, by including the following provisions to protect members of the public and artists:

      1. A general protection against realistic, digitally generated imitations of personal traits
      • That protects the general public against sharing of realistic, digitally generated imitations of other persons’ personal traits (such as looks, voice, etc.) without consent.
      1. An imitation protection of performance artists
      • That protects performance artists against sharing of realistic, digitally generated imitations of their artistic presentations or performances without consent.

Both provisions shall ensure that a clear legal basis, that can be used by everyone to remove realistic, digital imitations … from the various storage media we all use, including social media. The rules are therefore primarily to be used to activate the [European Union] Digital Services Act regarding the obligation of storage media to take steps to remove illegal content.

Sanctions and Right to Removal

According to the agreement, violations of the rules will not be criminalized and will not result in fines or prison sentences. Focus will instead be on ensuring that people have the right to remove online content and that the Danish and EU authorities can issue fines if the content is not removed. The relevant authorities are DSA-tilsynet, part of the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority responsible for enforcing the EU Digital Service Act, and the European Commission. While no specific right to compensation will be tied to the provision, Danish general civil rules will apply.  

Legislative Process and Proposal

Following adoption of the agreement, the Ministry of Culture prepared a proposal to amend the Danish Copyright Act (ophavsretsloven), which is subject to public review (høring) by stakeholders and the public, and will be followed by a vote in parliament during the 2025-2026 parliamentary session, which starts on the first Tuesday in October (October 7, 2025). Before implementing the new law, Denmark must notify the European Commission and ensure that it meets Denmark’s EU and international obligations. 

As proposed, the new provision protecting physical characteristics of private persons would read:

§  73 a.

Realistic digitally generated imitations of a natural person’s personal, physical characteristics may not be made available to the public without the consent of the person imitated.

Subsection 1 does not include imitations that are mainly expressions of caricature, satire, parody, pastiche, criticism of power, social criticism, etc., unless the imitation constitutes misinformation that can specifically cause serious danger to the rights or essential interests of others.

The protection in subsection 1, lasts until 50 years have elapsed after the year of death of the person imitated. (Translation by author.)

While the political agreement did not specify who could request the removal of deepfakes, the proposal from the Ministry of Culture makes clear that the provision would apply to all natural persons, including “foreign citizens.” The ministry is accepting comments on the proposal until August 21, 2025.

Previous Parliamentary Agreement Between Political Parties

Previously, in 2024, the parties of the Danish Parliament agreed among themselves to not use deepfakes of other politicians after a deepfake of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen went viral. Under that agreement, deepfakes of a party’s own members are permissible provided the user is informed the content is a deepfake.

Elin Hofverberg, Law Library of Congress
August 5, 2025

Read more Global Legal Monitor articles.

Read Law Library reports on Denmark.

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