Another sperm bank scandal, Danish students receive worst-ever PISA results and a crackdown on Airbnb

Okay, this week I'm bringing something that is all over the news and something that in some ways is very close to all of us, which is Airbnb.

Why? This is because if you go on DR, you can read a title that will sound something like New law aims to stop Airbnb speculation.

What does it mean? It doesn't mean, unfortunately, that...

this law will stop Airbnb but that some measures will be taken to prevent speculation on this kind of short-term rent.

Now, Rachel, do you know how many Airbnb there are in Copenhagen?

I don't.

I know that it is crazy expensive but thank God I've never had to avail of it.

I would guess maybe 2,000.

No.

So, as of August 2026, 11,600 active short-term rental listings are in Copenhagen.

I mean, I guess they, because I had to verify these numbers, so I went to multiple websites and this is, you know, a big number, but then there were other websites where they divided by area and it kind of adds up, but I think it, you know, it includes also the greater Copenhagen, you know, like also around.

Yeah.

It's a crazy amount and a lot of these Airbnb are basically owned by companies that maybe have a name like Rachel and Melissa House, you know, that looks like a private but actually they own maybe like 100 different listings and then it's actually companies profiting on it.

Okay.

So the law that is being discussed, it was discussed in January previously, but it's been again on the news, aims to prevent this kind of action from happening.

So it's not a law that will regulate properly Airbnb, but it's a law that aims to implement different kinds of fines, For example, there will be up to 100,000 kroner per apartment for companies that break the rules.

What are the rules? The rules are that you can, as a company, you can rent out an apartment with Airbnb for maximum 70 days a year.

As a private, you can do it for 30 days.

Okay, fair.

Fair.

I imagine there are a lot of loopholes in this because today I was when I was researching I was seeing that I was imagining okay maybe you can do 70 days on Airbnb 70 days on booking.com 70 days on another platform because this is not there is not a system that will you know check but also read into these kind of things But anyway, what they're trying to change is three things.

So have bigger fines and increase the checking on this.

Force transparency, which is the most important point, I would say, of this, which means that authorities can now ask platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com to hand over data, because until now it was not provided.

Of course, there was a law and there was a maximum of days that you could use this short term rent, but there was no data about it.

So imagine it would be hard to check.