Good morning, Au pairs star in all kinds of movie and book plots – love, scandal, high hopes, and murder. But beyond the drama lies a much tougher reality: exploitation, mistreatment, even modern-day slavery. Our Danish correspondent revisits the issue in this week's top story. Also, in our other stories, there's a lot of… outsourcing. Sweden is about to rent prison cells from Estonia to ease its own overcrowded prison system, and Finland's garbage business (buying it from other countries and burning it) raises a strange question: what if they start producing enough trash themselves?  Editor's noteLiene Lusite  The au pair-adoxYou may have watched Secrets We Keep (Reservatet) – this year's hit Danish Netflix series set in a wealthy Copenhagen suburb. It follows three women balancing class, motherhood, and marriage – as well as a murder mystery. But it is the au pairs in the background who have sparked the real debate in Denmark. The Danish au pair programme has been around since the 1970s and similar schemes are running in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Young foreigners, mostly women from the Philippines, come to Denmark for up to two years, live with a Danish family, and help with childcare and household chores. In return, they get a bit of pocket money and a unique opportunity to experience Danish culture. It's lovely in theory. Less so in reality, though. Technically, au pairs are not workers – they are 'part of the family'. But when they work 30 hours of domestic duties a week for around €630 a month, the line between cultural exchange and underpaid labour gets rather blurry. A survey from 2023 found that 9 out of 10 au pairs in Denmark send money home – a sign that, for many, this is more about economic survival. In recent years, the number of complaints from au pairs about abusive and exploitative treatment has risen, with several host families (35 across 2022 and 2023 to be precise) being blacklisted and fined. Still, the scheme remains popular, with around 700 new permits issued annually. In contrast, Norway chose to shut down its au pair programme entirely in 2024, following repeated reports of mistreatment. Defenders of the programme insist it is a win-win situation: families get help and au pairs get language skills, cultural exposure, and potentially a stepping stone to a life in Europe. Some women admit that having an au pair eases the domestic workload, which still falls predominantly on women. This gives them the time and space to maintain full-time careers. However, critics have called the au pair model a form of modern-day colonialism, framed as 'mutual exchange', which reinforces stark global inequalities.  | Erica Bernsten Strange
After high school, I spent eight months living with a host family in New Zealand. I improved my English, got to travel the country, and had a host family that really felt like family. But I also had an EU passport. That makes all the difference: I was not sending money home. Coming from Denmark – a country proud of its reputation as a beacon of gender equality and social fairness – there is something deeply uncomfortable about the paradoxical system that relies on the exploitation of women from the Global South. |
Prisons without bordersSaara Saskia Sutt Did you know it was possible to serve a prison sentence abroad? Well, Estonia has reached a deal with Sweden to rent its prison space and accept up to 600 Swedish inmates starting from July 2026. Discussions about outsourcing Estonian prisons have been ongoing since last summer, and multiple countries – like Sweden and the Netherlands – have expressed interest. Swedish prisons are currently operating at 96% capacity, partly because of rising gang crime. This has resulted in Sweden having the highest rate of deadly gun violence per capita in Europe. Sweden has been looking for a solution for a while now and has been investigating the feasibility of hosting its inmates elsewhere since 2023. Enter Estonia, which had the EU's lowest prison occupancy rate in 2023 at 56.2%. Its conviction rates have fallen, with the number of inmates reaching an all-time low in 2023 and continuing to drop. It's cheaper too: Sweden has agreed to pay €8,500 per inmate per month, which is less than the €11,500 it would cost at home. Meanwhile, the cost of housing a prisoner in Estonia is around €5,000. The deal will also create 400 jobs at Tartu Prison, which recently made staff cuts due to low occupancy. It sounds like a win-win situation for everybody, doesn't it? However, Estonians are mainly concerned about the inmates who will be sent there, fearing that organised crime will be imported along with them. To address this, Estonia will assess inmates individually and will only accept healthy adult men serving long sentences – for crimes like murder, sexual assault or embezzlement. Anyone tied to gangs or extremism will be excluded. This isn't a first: Norway housed inmates in the Netherlands between 2015 and 2018, and Denmark is set to transfer prisoners to Kosovo in 2026. But these deals have sparked controversy due to differences in sentencing conditions, as Nordic countries are known for their focus on rehabilitation. For the Swedish-Estonian deal, agreements have been made to ensure that these inmates would have a similar experience to a term in a Swedish prison. While Tartu prison has very modern infrastructure, similar to Swedish prisons, there are differences in how the sentences unfold. For example, Sweden and Estonia do not have the same disciplinary measures, so it has been agreed that Estonian disciplinary penalties will not be applied to Swedish inmates. However, after Norway stopped outsourcing the cells for its inmates, a Norwegian prison law group stated that they believed inmates carrying out their sentence in the Netherlands received fewer and less meaningful rehabilitation opportunities than inmates in Norwegian prisons. Denmark's deal with Kosovo raised human rights concerns, as there have been allegations of abuse in Kosovo's prisons in the past. While outsourcing incarceration may ease overcrowding, it raises questions about the rights of prisoners held outside their country's justice system. For instance, however modern the Tartu Prison may be, Estonia places less focus on rehabilitation than the Nordic model. Even with adaptations made to ensure the sentences carried out at home or abroad are similar, can they ever really be the same?
 Recruiting How to fix Europe's recruitment issuesLast week, we detailed Europe's recruitment issues amid shrinking troop counts: from insufficient funding and a hostile working environment to antiquated recruitment and a conspicuous lack of diversity. And today, we will tell you how Europe can solve them. Darius Kölsch 1: FundingMake it feel more like home: with billions of euros sunk into equipment purchases, renovating and maintaining military infrastructure is equally necessary, so the barracks housing soldiers are not falling apart. This also goes for personal equipment, from rifles to socks, especially if armies seek to expand. Increasing pay for soldiers is equally essential, as soldiers in most European militaries earn less than their civilian counterparts in the same specialisation. In one study of 11 countries, only three paid their soldiers at or above the average civilian pay. Also, as soldiers often struggle to find civilian work after their service, militaries should forge better connections with the private sector and provide courses and other training to re-enter the job market. So it's not only funding militaries need – they also need to grow a lot closer to the societies they serve. 2: Changing cultureA significantly harder task is changing the culture in and around the military. This includes hazing and sexual assault (of civilians and fellow soldiers), a culture of silence which prevents accountability, and above-average occurrence of suicides or suicide attempts by the affected. And, of course, frequent cases of right-wing extremism and extreme racism. Any one of these issues would be enough to put off many potential recruits, so it's in the interest of Europe's armies to deal with them. More accurately representing the society it protects would boost morale and make the military more effective in equally diverse sets of situations. Unfortunately, this culture might prove difficult to change, since that same culture will have produced many people who still hold leadership positions. As this report by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism puts it: "policies aimed to create inclusion for ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities will only succeed to the extent that the internal culture supports these initiatives." And so, here, like the hard factors, significant political will and effort to replace soldiers in key positions will be necessary to change the culture, along with a dedicated push by governments to make "zero-tolerance" policies actually zero-tolerant. 3: Jump-starting recruitmentBut even if these problems have been solved, the public has to know about it for recruitment numbers to increase. The most-discussed solution for the personnel shortage is conscription (for countries without it). Before reintroducing that, making the military a good place to work is all the more necessary to avoid the boosted social awareness post-conscription repulsing even more potential recruits. In the same vein, conscription systems that are essentially voluntary, such as the Scandinavian systems – a competitive, gender-neutral, selective model – and the proposed German version, would further help increase recruitment numbers while avoiding blowback. Since many militaries have insufficient equipment as is, starting with low numbers of recruits is necessary anyway. 4: Engagement across societyAll of the above solutions are important. But fundamentally, for recruitment to recover from the current crisis sustainably, people have to be convinced that what they are dedicating themselves to, and in extreme cases, risking their lives for, is worth it. In other words, to ask people to give their lives for the country, their country should do something for them. Finland, for instance, a country that is held up as a model for modern defence practices, is one of the top social spenders, and has one of the most equal societies in Europe. Unfortunately, Europe is currently in a time of significant political upheaval as a result of years of cost of living and housing crises (to name just two), problems that politicians have decidedly failed to address. In a utopian dimension…Before policy nerds (which include myself) get too excited – I am not arguing that better policy will solve the problem. Better policy is necessary, yes. But what convinces people, fundamentally, are narratives. And currently, the most prevalent narrative that addresses the political issues is the foolish argument by the far-right that simply kicking out the foreigners will solve everything. Of course, this is delusional (hello, Brexit!). But this narrative (and the millions spent on disinformation campaigns to support it) explains the rise of the far right compared to the centrist parties that are in power currently. Their consistent deferral to the right on issues from immigration to workers' rights, rather than proposing a true alternative narrative, helps explain the low trust in European governments. What is needed, then, is a new, convincing narrative to rally Europeans behind, investing them in society and its wellbeing, by promising and delivering tangible progress in their everyday lives. Only then will people be willing to commit their lives to a country.
Going on Summer holidays Every country and region has its own holiday schedule. In northern Europe, countries like Denmark and Finland tend to start their summer breaks early, whereas in the south, countries like Spain and Portugal don't peak until mid-August. These patterns are influenced by many factors, but primarily it is due to differences in climate, culture, and school calendars. Interestingly, southern Europeans often go on holidays collectively, with the hottest weeks of summer bringing widespread shutdowns, whereas holidays up in the north are more evenly distributed throughout the year.  Created by Sebastian Gräff.
Your waste is my businessFinland is actively burning other countries' garbage – and turning it into electricity. With household consumption – and therefore waste levels – dropping overall in Finland, particularly in late 2024, the country turned to Italy and Ireland for backup fuel to keep its massive waste-to-energy plant in Vantaa running. Around 30,000 tonnes of foreign waste now arrive annually at the Port of Inkoo in the south of Finland, where it's unloaded, transported inland, and incinerated to produce heat and power for thousands of Finnish homes. If all goes to plan, the 30,000 tonnes of waste could double next year. Exporting countries get to offload their growing trash mountains, while Finland earns a modest fee and keeps its energy output steady. In a continent wrestling with both waste management and energy needs, this unlikely trade is proving surprisingly efficient.  | Mikael Kataja
But what happens when Finland's economy rebounds and its own trash bins begin to fill again? Although at a very small margin, the household consumption has already gone up a bit in 2025. The Vantaa plant, which once ran comfortably on Finnish refuse alone, may soon no longer need foreign input, leaving the countries with overflow to (again) look for alternatives elsewhere, or find less sustainable solutions. As one nation's garbage becomes another's power supply, the line between sustainability and short-term convenience blurs. The story of the garbage trade is a great example of how deeply Europe's infrastructure, economies and ecological ambitions are interconnected. |
Every day, our correspondents recommend one song to you. Today, Erica Bernsten Strange chose this one. We hope you enjoy!  Ung Kniv The Minds of 99 Some songs are made for those endlessly bright Nordic summer days. For me, The Minds of 99's "Ung Kniv" ("Young Knife") captures that restless energy that kicks in when the sun never sets and you are determined to soak up every ray of sunshine before winter returns.
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Taking in an au pair is rather unfamiliar to me as a Latvian. Perhaps the small town that I grew up in is at fault here, but to me, it's a concept that works the other way around: Latvians are the ones taking up opportunities abroad. I had somehow missed this whole chunk of the topic in reality. Well, you live, you learn. Enjoy those still-shrinking nights of June! Have a lovely weekend, Liene Lusite Leading Editor for Northern Europe PS: Can you tell us what you think of today's edition of the newsletter? Every day, as a small reward for your feedback, we will show you a cute animal picture. This newsletter was edited by Dylan Goodman, the visuals were created by Philippe Kramer, and the executive producer was Julius E. O. Fintelmann. |
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