Arne Melchior

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Arne Melchior, born 1924, is a son of Marcus Melchior. He is a Danish politician of Jewish descent, and a supporter of Jewish causes.

Melchior was active in the Social Democratic Party, but left this party with other to found the Centre Democrats.

He was member of the Danish Parliament, the Folketing, for the years 1973-75 and 1977-2001, and traffic minister in the Conservative Poul Schlüter government from 1982-86, and Minister for Communcation and Tourism in the Social Democratic Poul Nyrup Rasmussen government from 1993-94. (The party affiliation mentioned applies to the Prime Ministers only, most Danish governments are coalition governments.)

He represented his party in the Folketing's Foreign Policy Committee 1994-2001, when he was forced to step down after having publicly defended Israel's use of moderate physical coercion on terror suspects. He was also forced to leave the Centre Democratic Parliamentary group - and the way he was treated by party leaders led to the complete collapse of the Party's vote at the General Election 2001 from which the Party has never recovered.