You are an EU/EEA or Swizz citizen and work in Denmark
You may apply for equal status with Danish students and apply for state education grant (SU) if you are an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen, and:
If you want to receive SU as a worker under EU law, you must meet the following conditions throughout the entire period you wish to receive SU:
We always make an individual assessment of your employment when assessing whether you qualify for SU as a worker under EU law. This includes your employment terms stated in your contract, such as whether you are entitled to sick pay and covered by a collective agreement.
If your application is approved, you will receive an approval letter via Digital Post on borger.dk stating how many hours per week you must work to maintain your right to SU.
You can apply for SU as a worker from the day your employment begins. However, it is important that you work at least 10–12 hours per week during the first 10 weeks after being approved. If you do so, you obtain worker status under EU law.
If you have already worked at least 10–12 hours per week for a minimum of 10 weeks before being approved, you have already obtained worker status.
If your situation changes and you temporarily do not work or work fewer than 10–12 hours per week, you may in some cases still receive SU - read more on the page “Changes to your circumstances”. Your entitlement depends on whether you had status as worker before the change.
It is important that you have status as worker before taking holiday. If you take holiday before obtaining this status, you may lose your SU.
You must always inform us and submit documentation when you take holiday.
Below you can see two examples of how taking holiday can affect whether you are entitled to SU during your holiday:
You are hired on 1 September and approved for SU from September. You work at least 10 hours per week until 15 October, when you take two weeks of holiday which is documented by your employer. You have only worked 10 hours a week for 6 weeks before the holiday. You have not obtained worker status prior to your holiday, so we discontinue your SU and if you have received too much SU, it must be repaid.
You are hired on 1 July and approved for SU from September. You work at least 10 hours per week from 1 July until 15 October, then take two weeks of holiday which is documented by your employer. After your holiday you continue working 10–12 hours per week. You have obtained worker status prior to your holiday, so you can receive SU during your holiday.
You can read about how to deal with other changes to your circumstances here
Once approved as a worker, you must continue working the required number of hours per week stated in the approval letter you received in Digital Post on borger.dk. You must do this throughout the entire period during which you receive SU. We continuously monitor that you comply with this.
We initially check your employment based on the information your employer reports to the Danish Tax Agency regarding your income and working hours.
If, based on our information, you have not worked at least 10–12 hours per week during a period, we will ask you to provide additional documentation. We therefore encourage you to keep records of which days you worked and how many hours you worked each day.
You can provide documentation such as:
You must contact us immediately if you stop working or temporarily work fewer than 10–12 hours per week (e.g. due to holiday, unemployment, or internship). Your entitlement depends on whether you have status as worker before the change.
You can read about how to deal with other changes to your circumstances here
According to EU case law, a person must perform services for another person for remuneration and under their direction over a certain period to be considered a worker. The work must be genuine and effective, not marginal.
As a general rule, this means that you must work a minimum of 10–12 hours each week. Since, according to EU Court of Justice case law, it is crucial that the employment takes place over a certain period, we generally expect that you work to this extent each week for a continuous period of at least 10 weeks.
In our assessment of whether you can be considered a worker under EU law, we also look at whether you are entitled to paid holiday, sick pay, the duration of the employment relationship, and whether you are covered by a collective agreement. We also consider whether your monthly salary is of a certain level. General price and wage developments in Denmark mean that wages increase over time, and we take this into account when assessing whether you can be considered a worker under EU law.
If you want to receive SU as self-employed in Denmark according to EU law, you must meet the following conditions throughout the entire period you receive SU:
We always assess your business individually when we decide whether you can be considered self-employed in Denmark under EU law.
If we approve your application, we will send you an approval letter via Digital Post on borger.dk, informing you of the level of turnover your business must have in order to maintain your right to SU as self-employed.
When applying for SU as self-employed, you may submit:
Please note that starting a business in Denmark as a foreign citizen may have tax consequences. Contact the Danish Tax Agency for guidance.
Once you have been approved for SU as a self-employed person, you must continue to maintain the level of economic activity in your business on which your SU approval was based.
We continuously monitor the economic activity in your business based on your annual tax assessment for the year(s) in which you have received SU as a self-employed person.
If, based on the information in your tax assessment, you do not have sufficient economic activity to meet the requirement, we will ask you to provide documentation of your economic activity, for example in the form of:
If you cannot prove you meet the conditions, we will discontinue your SU. If you have received too much SU, it must be repaid.
We always make a specific assessment of an EU/EEA citizen’s business when determining whether you can be considered self-employed in Denmark under EU law. In our assessment, we put emphasis on whether the business is registered in the Central Business Register (CVR) and whether you can demonstrate that the business is economically active.
We assume that you carry out professional activities of an economic nature on your own account and at your own risk, with the aim of making a profit. This means that, as a self-employed person, you must participate in the economic life of Denmark in a stable and ongoing manner. We also assume that the business is carried out over a certain period and with some regularity, and that it is not of a purely marginal scale.
If you have previously worked in Denmark, in very special cases you may receive SU under the rules on continuity or retraining.
Read more about when you meet the requirements for either continuity or retraining
If you are granted equal status with Danish citizens, please be aware that you fall within the scope of the rules of how much you are allowed to earn each year next to your studies. If your private earnings exceed a set amount, you have to repay some of the grants and loans received that year plus 7%.
Read more about how much you are allowed to earn (in Danish)
Se answers to the questions most frequently asked concerning equal status with Danish citizens when you are an employee under EU law