Sweden, Denmark tighten borders

COPENHAGEN:  Sweden on Monday imposed controls on travellers arriving from Denmark in a bid to curb an unprecedented influx of refugees, prompting knock-on measures from Denmark that triggered fresh concern for Europe’s Schengen passport-free zone.

Hours after the Swedish controls on a major bridge-and-tunnel link with Denmark went into effect, the Danish government, which fears being saddled with large numbers of migrants, announced it would implement spot checks on its border with Germany.

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 the European Union) in recent years,” German foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer told reporters.

“Schengen is very important but it is in danger,” he said.

Swedish Migration Minister Morgan Johansson defended his country’s systematic controls, saying they were aimed at “preventing an acute situation where we can no longer welcome asylum seekers properly”.

The new measures mean travellers between the neighbouring countries will have to show their ID cards for the first time since the late 1950s, when a Nordic agreement on passport-free travel came into force that predates the 20-year-old Schengen zone.

– Domino effect –

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen cited the Swedish checks to justify his own country’s immediate introduction of random border controls.

“We are simply reacting to a decision made in Sweden… This is not a happy moment at all,” he told reporters.

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’s clear the EU is not able to protect its outer borders and other countries are going to be forced to introduce … border controls,” he said, adding: “Europe’s leaders must react to this.”

Under Schengen rules, countries are allowed to re-introduce border checks for up to six months in exceptional circumstances.

More than one million migrants reached Europe in 2015, most of whom were refugees fleeing war and violence in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

Europe has struggled to respond to the continent’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II, with several Schengen countries, including Germany, Austria and France, already re-imposing border checks last year.

Last week Norway, which is not an EU member but belongs to Schengen, announced it would start turning back refugees without visas arriving from elsewhere in the Schengen area, particularly Sweden.

And Finnish border guards recently began requiring ferry operators to make sure that migrants have either visas or residency permits before being allowed to board, cutting off one of the last migrant routes to Finland. – AFP