Faroese politics: every party answers two questions

Why every Faroese party has two positions

The party system in the Løgting works as a grid. Four main parties typically take around 20% each at an election: the conservative Union Party, the Social Democratic Party, the People's Party and the democratic socialist Republic, and each of them holds a separate position on two axes, left against right and independence against union with Denmark. Three smaller parties sit around them: the classical liberal Progress, the liberal Self-Government party and the Christian conservative Centre Party. Each party carries a letter at elections, and the letter is what appears on campaign posters.

The sovereignty axis cuts across the other one. The four parties that seek a Faroese state outside Denmark, according to the English Wikipedia account of the independence movement, are the People's Party, Republic, Progress and the Centre Party, which between them run from the democratic socialist left to the Christian and classical liberal right. The Self-Government party argues for sovereignty in a milder form. The Union Party wants the tie to Copenhagen kept, and Republic was founded in protest against the Home Rule Act of 1948.

The election of 26 March 2026 put numbers on the grid. Turnout was 89.5%, 1.4 percentage points higher than at the previous election, and ten women were elected, the same number as last time.

Read down the last column and the independence parties hold 19 seats, one more if Self-Government is added. Read down the fourth and the People's Party and the Union Party sit together on the right. The People's Party's 26.8% in 2026 was the highest share any single party had taken since 1990, and it still came to nine seats of 33. The two Wikipedia accounts of the result disagree on where the party started from, five seats in one and six in the other, and both agree on the nine it ended with.

With no party near 17 seats, a Faroese government is a coalition as a matter of arithmetic. Two of the four large parties together reach roughly 40% of the vote, and any pair of them shares at most one axis, so a majority built from them has to cross either the sovereignty line or the left and right one.

How the Løgting chooses and removes a government

The Løgting has 33 members, elected for four years by proportional representation. The number is set in two places. The Stýrisskipanarlóg, the Faroese act that works as the islands' constitution, allows up to 33 members, and the election law fixes exactly 33. The Løgting can lower the figure by changing the election law on its own. Raising it above 33 means amending the Stýrisskipanarlóg, and that takes two votes: the change must pass the Løgting, then pass unchanged in the first session of a newly elected Løgting.

After an election the speaker, the løgtingsformaður, talks to the leader of every party with seats and asks each whom their party recommends to form a government. The mandate goes to the leader with the widest support. Within ten working days of the new Løgting's first sitting, the speaker puts a candidate for løgmaður, the prime minister, to a vote. The candidate is rejected only if a majority votes against, so a løgmaður can take office on the strength of abstentions. A løgmaður who called the election without resigning may carry on after it unless a majority of the Løgting stands against.

The løgmaður appoints the ministers, at least two by statute and usually around seven. Neither the løgmaður nor a minister may keep a seat in the Løgting, and either one falls if 17 members vote no confidence. The same figure is the quorum: more than half the members, 17 of 33, must be in the chamber before anything can be decided.

Under the Stýrisskipanarlóg the speaker is the highest authority in the country, relieves a løgmaður of office, and runs the search for a new one when there is none. The speaker and the three deputies sit for the whole electoral period, and removing them early takes a written demand from four-fifths of the members, at least 27.

What the committees and the calendar do

The Løgting sits in seven standing committees of seven members each, apart from the committee on government affairs, which has three and supervises whether the løgmaður and the ministers keep within the law. The 45 committee seats are shared out in proportion to the party groups. The foreign affairs committee holds a statutory right: under section 54 of the Stýrisskipanarlóg the government must consult it before any decision of major foreign policy significance, and before negotiations with Copenhagen that matter to the relationship.

The parliamentary year starts at 13:00 on Ólavsøka, 29 July, when members, ministers, officials and the Danish state's commissioner walk in procession from the Løgting to the cathedral and back. The løgmaður then gives the address on the state of the country, and the Løgting debates it within six working days. The busiest months run from October to Christmas, when the budget and its accompanying bills must pass, and through March and April. A session handles between 100 and 150 items. Bills that have not been finally passed when an election is called or a session ends lapse.

Why one constituency replaced seven

From the Election Act of 1978 until 2007 the islands voted in seven constituencies, most of them following the old sýslur, with Streymoy split between its northern half and the Tórshavn area. They filled 27 seats, and up to five supplementary seats were added for proportionality. All eight general elections between 1978 and 2004 produced a Løgting of 32 members. The seven districts were abolished on 25 October 2007, and the first election with the whole Faroe Islands as one constituency and a fixed 33 seats was held on 19 January 2008.

The six sýslur survive as police districts and as the names people use for regions. Each once held its own spring assembly, the várting. Local government now sits in 29 municipalities covering about 120 settlements, and elections are held at municipal level as well as national.

The right to vote follows from the Home Rule Act, which lets voting and eligibility for Faroese institutions be tied to being Faroese and deems any Danish subject resident in the islands to be one. The Løgting's own guidance sets the terms: a voter must be 18, must hold Danish nationality and must be registered as living in the islands. Students temporarily abroad can apply to keep the vote.

How Faroese voters divide on independence

As of 2021 the islanders were described as evenly split between those favouring independence and those who wanted to stay in the Kingdom of Denmark. Both camps are wide. Some on the independence side want an immediate unilateral declaration, and others want sovereignty reached step by step with the consent of the Danish government and the Danish public. Many unionists expect and welcome more autonomy while keeping the tie.

The seat count on the sovereignty axis swings between elections. In 2019 the unionist parties won 52% of the Løgting's seats; in 2026 the parties seeking independence won 19 of the 33. Before the 2019 election the Faroese constitution agreed in draft in February 2017 had already stalled, because its committee split over marriage equality and family law, questions from the other axis. The Faroese government's own list of fields still administered from Copenhagen includes family law and succession law, so part of the dispute that stopped the draft concerned a field the islands had not yet taken over.

The sovereignty question returned to the agenda from outside in 2024. The Swedish government, holding the rotating presidency of the Nordic Council that year, excluded the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland from council activities. Greenland boycotted the council in response, and the Faroese government called for the Helsinki Treaty to be amended to give it equal status or it would withdraw. The English Wikipedia account of the movement reports Danish counterparts putting the secession debate at its highest level in 20 years. The Danish and Icelandic governments backed reform of the council. The Faroes hold associate membership, and their place inside the Kingdom of Denmark is the reason given for why they may not be entitled to equal footing there.

Who speaks for the Faroes in Copenhagen

The islands elect two members of the Folketing, the Danish parliament, under the Danish constitution. The Home Rule Act of 1948 set representation at a minimum of two. At the Folketing election of 31 October 2022 the two Faroese seats went one to the Social Democrats and one to the Union Party. Those two members sit in a chamber that still legislates for the islands on everything the Løgting has not taken over.

Danish law reaches the Faroes only by a set route. The Faroe Islands are a separate jurisdiction within the realm, and Danish legislation in fields not yet assumed, along with treaties Denmark joins, needs explicit consent from the Faroese authorities before it extends to them. Danish government bills that apply only to the islands, or matter particularly to them, go to the Faroese authorities for comment before they reach the Folketing. A Danish act takes effect in the islands only once it has been promulgated there, in the Faroese government's own law gazette as well as the Danish one.

The Danish state keeps a resident representative, the ríkisumboðsmaður, or high commissioner, appointed by the monarch. The office has a seat in the Løgting and may speak on joint Danish and Faroese affairs, and it has no vote.

Where Tórshavn and Copenhagen disagree over who holds a competence, the Home Rule Act sends the question to a committee of seven: two members appointed by the Danish government, two by the Faroese government and three judges of the Danish Supreme Court named by its president. If the four government appointees agree, the matter is settled; otherwise the judges decide.

What the block grant pays for now

Copenhagen pays an annual block grant, frozen at 642 million Danish kroner, the figure Danmarks Nationalbank also gave for 2017. Two pages published by the Faroese side weigh it differently: one says it funded 13% of the national budget in 2017, the other 9.5% in 2020. The Takeover Act of 2005 rules out any grant for a field assumed under it, so each new competence the Løgting takes over is paid for by the Faroese treasury.

How the Faroes trade outside the European Union

The Faroe Islands declined to join Denmark in the European Economic Community in 1973, keeping control of their own fishing waters, and both European Union treaties now state that the islands are outside the Union. A protocol to Denmark's accession treaty goes further: Danish nationals living in the Faroes are not counted as Danish nationals for the purposes of the treaties, so a Dane resident in Tórshavn is not a citizen of the European Union, while other EU nationals living there remain EU citizens.

Because the islands sit outside Denmark's customs area, they run their own trade policy. The Authorisation Act of 2005 lets the Faroese government negotiate and sign agreements with states and international bodies on behalf of the realm, in fields it has fully taken over. Defence and security agreements are excluded, and so are agreements that would bind Denmark or that are negotiated inside a body Denmark already belongs to.

The most comprehensive of the islands' free trade agreements, by the Faroese government's account, is the Hoyvík Agreement with Iceland, in force since 2006, which creates a single economic area across both countries with free movement of goods, services, capital and persons. The Faroese government has also concluded free trade agreements with several other countries and keeps diplomatic missions in Iceland, the United Kingdom, Russia and to the European Union.

In mid-2005 Faroese representatives raised joining the European Free Trade Association. The EFTA Convention admits only states, so the idea became membership by the Kingdom of Denmark in respect of the Faroes. The Danish government said this would not make the islands a separate member of the European Economic Area, because Denmark is already a party to that agreement, and it officially supports EFTA membership with effect for the Faroes.

Travel is governed by a different arrangement. The islands are outside the Schengen Agreement, have belonged to the Nordic Passport Union since 1966, and have no border checks with the Schengen countries.

How fish quotas shape Faroese foreign policy

Fishing rights are negotiated by the Faroese minister of fisheries, with the European Union and with other states. At the two regional fisheries bodies, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization and the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, the Kingdom of Denmark is the member in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland, and the delegation that negotiates is Faroese and Greenlandic. Bilateral fishing agreements let Faroese vessels fish in the zones of the European Union, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Russia.

The Russian agreement is a trade. Faroese boats need cod and haddock quotas in the Barents Sea, and Danmarks Nationalbank recorded in 2017 that those quotas are closely linked to Russia's access to blue whiting and mackerel in the Faroese zone.

The coastal states disagreed over the distribution of the mackerel stock from 2010 to 2013. In 2014 the islands concluded a five-year mackerel agreement with the European Union and Norway. As of 2017 no agreement on herring or blue whiting had been reached, and the Faroes, like the other coastal states, set their own quotas for both.

When the European Union and Russia imposed reciprocal trade sanctions over the war in Donbas in 2014, the Faroe Islands were outside both. The islands had just come through a year of embargo from the European Union, Denmark included, and they began exporting large quantities of fresh salmon to Russia. The løgmaður of the time, Kaj Leo Johannesen, went to Moscow to negotiate the trade.

Where defence leaves the Faroe Islands

Defence belongs to Copenhagen, and the Takeover Act keeps it there along with foreign and security policy, the constitution, nationality, the Supreme Court and monetary policy. The Faroe Islands have been inside NATO since 1949 through Denmark's membership. The Royal Danish Navy's 1st Squadron works mainly in the waters around the Faroes and Greenland; as of 2023 it had four Thetis-class and three Knud Rasmussen-class patrol vessels, with the royal yacht in a secondary surveillance and rescue role.

The two governments signed an agreement in 2022 to build an air surveillance radar on the islands, with a reported range of 300 to 400 kilometres over the airspace between Iceland, Norway and Britain. A Danish, Faroese and Greenlandic contact committee on foreign, security and defence policy was set up in October 2021, and the exchange of classified information is a stated part of its work.

The Fámjin Declaration of 29 March 2005 records the principle the Faroese side works from in these fields: where international negotiations touch matters of special interest to the islands, the natural starting point is that the Faroese government takes part alongside the Danish one. It must also be consulted before Denmark ratifies any agreement of particular importance to the Faroes. Under section 19 of the Danish constitution, the Danish Prime Minister's Office notes, the Authorisation Act places no limit on the foreign policy powers of the Danish government and the Folketing.