Sweden and Denmark tighten border controls

Denmark on Monday stepped up its border controls with Germany on the heels of Sweden’s move to tighten security due to an influx of refugees.

Hours earlier Sweden imposed border controls on the Oresund bridge – which connects Malmo in southern Sweden and Copenhagen in Demark – making it harder for bother migrants and commuters to travel.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he had introduced the measure to ensure that “refugees and migrants are not stranded in Denmark”, in what he called “a reaction to a decision made in Sweden”.

Denmark is now enforcing its own temporary controls at its border with Germany, joining neighbours Sweden and Norway in moving to suspend an agreement to keep internal borders open.

The new controls would not cause a problem for “ordinary” Danes and Germans, Mr Rasmussen said.

Several other European Union countries, including Germany, Austria and France, also re-imposed border checks past year as the continent grappled with its biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

According to the PM, Swedish ID checks “could lead to more refugees and migrants being stopped on their journey northward, and therefore ending up with us in Denmark”.

To comply with the new Swedish rules, passengers on Monday had to show identification to board trains departing from Copenhagen Airport to Sweden across a bridge-and-tunnel link.

It appeared to have an immediate effect. Swedish police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford said that by midday Monday only one asylum-seeker had arrived by train across the bridge.

More than 190,000 migrants crossed the German-Danish border a year ago.

Sweden has always been proud of its self-proclaimed status as a “humanitarian superpower” and its decision in November to tighten border controls and asylum rules came close to bringing down Prime Minister Stefan Lofven’s minority coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens.

“The government now considers that the current situation, with a large number of people entering the country in a relatively short time, poses a serious threat to public order and national security”, Sweden’s government said in a statement, the Guardian reported. If people can move freely through the EU’s external borders and are not registered on arrival in Greece or Italy, then it’s a simple matter for them to move on and threaten the whole system.

The Danish side suggested that the Swedes should pay 1 million kroner ($145,000) for the ID checks, carried out by train operators in Denmark. “We need a common strategy”, he said.

Denmark beefed up its border controls with Germany as of noon Monday (1100 GMT, 6 a.m. EST).

However, he specified that the Danish would only be limited by “spot checks” on passengers on trains crossing the border on the Jutland peninsula and on ferries arriving in the Danish ports of Gedser and Roedby.

Up to 300 asylum seekers leave Germany each day for Denmark, according to Berlin, many of them headed for Sweden, which has received more migrants per capita than any other European Union state.