North Europe nations seek help on migrant flows

It caused delays of up to 50 minutes for trains and buses crossing the Oresund Bridge, which links the two nations.

The prime minister added that “you will see more and more countries forced to introduce temporary border controls” due to the European Union being unable to protect its outer borders.

“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”, the Swedish government said in a statement. Some 160,000 people applied for asylum in Sweden past year, majority from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rasmussen warned that Sweden s controls could have a domino effect on Denmark, which received just 21,000 asylum requests in 2015, compared to Sweden s 163,000.

It appeared to have an immediate effect.

The Swedish coast guard said it was prepared for the possibility that migrants may now try to clandestinely cross the Oresund strait that divides Denmark and Sweden.

 In 2015 Sweden took in more refugees per head of population than any other European Union country.

The new checks were put into place at midnight on Sunday.

Lokke Rasmussen clarified that this does not mean an automatic rejection of applications for asylum, but a protectionist measure in response to the closing of Sweden. Security staff check the ID of a passenger at the train station Copenhagen International Airport in Kastrup to prevent illegal migrants entering Sweden on Monday Jan. 4, 2016.

Marten Jegenstam, a 41-year-old consultant who lives in Denmark but works in Sweden, said that controls were needed.

He said the Danish measures wouldn’t be as far-reaching as the Swedish ones, entailing only “spot checks” on passengers on trains crossing the mainland border on the Jutland peninsula and on ferries arriving in the Danish ports of Gedser and Roedby. As a result, police patrols will be deployed at the border to check the documents of every single person passing through Slovenia, which is part of the Schengen zone.

“We want to avoid burdening the police too much as they are transferring officers to the temporary border controls from different precincts, where they may lack the necessary manpower to carry out their daily duties”, Støjberg explained in a statement.

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.

Denmark’s state-owned rail operator said the ID controls would cost it almost 1 million Danish crowns ($147,000) a day.

“After the attacks in Paris, we’re not only faced with the refugee issue but also the issue of terrorism”, he said.

Alarmed by the restrictions, which come as both Germany and Sweden grapple with record migrant numbers, Berlin warned Europe’s Schengen zone was “in danger”. “Freedom of movement is an important principle – one of the biggest achievements in recent years”, Schaefer told.

Germany, Austria, France and non-EU member Norway, which is also in Schengen, have all implemented limited border controls to better handle the refugee flows.