Denmark has introduced temporary controls along its border with Germany, just hours after Sweden took similar measures to check the flow of refugees.
Sweden began checking documents of travellers from Denmark on Monday for the first time in half a century, causing delays of trains and frustration among travellers.
Those without valid ID documents are denied to board buses, trains and ferries bound for Sweden, but cars are exempt from checks.
Denmark's prime minister said Sweden's move gave his country no option but to impose its own border controls. He appealed to the European Union to take "collective decisions" to better protect its external borders against the tide of migrants and refugees.
"The Swedish ID checks can increase the risk of a large number of illegal immigrants to accumulate in and around Copenhagen," Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in Copenhagen, justifying the new controls on the German border.
Last year about 163,000 refugees sought asylum in Sweden, the largest number for any EU country relative to its population.
But with arrivals running at around 10,000 a week in November, mostly travelling through Denmark, the Swedish government has said it is time to tighten border controls and asylum rules.
Immediate effect
The ID controls appeared to have an immediate effect. Ewa-Gun Westford, Swedish police spokesperson, said that as of midday on Monday only one asylum-seeker had arrived by train across the Oresund bridge.
At the height of the refugee crisis a few months ago, more than 1,000 asylum-seekers crossed the bridge daily.
The border controls follow the reintroduction of border checks in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium and several other European countries.
Rasmussen said the Danish border controls would last for 10 days but could be extended.
Morgan Johansson, Swedish justice and migration minister, welcomed the Danish border checks, but said they came too late.
He told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that the reason Sweden got overwhelmed last autumn was because Denmark functioned as a "transit country".
He said ID controls could also help authorities to prevent attacks.
"After the attacks in Paris, we're not only faced with the refugee issue but also the issue of terrorism," he said.
Rights groups have warned that child refugees travelling on their own will be worst-hit by the new checks, as they often travel without documents.
Of those seeking asylum in Sweden in 2015, about 80 percent lacked passports or equivalent IDs at the time of filing their applications, according to the Swedish Migration Agency.
Schengen zone 'in danger'
Reacting to the Scandinavian border checks, Germany warned that the passport-free Schengen zone was "in danger".
"Freedom of movement is an important principle - one of the biggest achievements [in the EU] in recent years," Martin Schaefer, Germany's foreign ministry spokesperson, said.
"Schengen is very important but it is in danger."
Last week Norway, which is not an EU member but does belong to the Schengen area, said it would start turning back refugees without visas arriving from elsewhere in the Schengen zone, particularly Sweden.
Schaefer said it was "crucial that we in Europe find common solutions" to the refugee crisis, and said the EU must now focus on ensuring the security of its external borders.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has said refugees will face increasingly slim chances of asylum in Europe should more countries impose stricter entry requirements.
Mattias Axelsson, UNHCR spokesperson in northern Europe, said governments must understand that refugees are under tremendous strain and that those fleeing do not always have the possibility to bring ID documents.
"You can't expect that those who have the right to asylum also have the right documents with them from the beginning, that is simply impossible," he told Swedish news agency TT.
"We follow this with growing concern."
Sweden has seen a decrease in the number of people seeking asylum in recent weeks, following news of tighter border checks and stricter rules for residency permits.
The country is facing an acute accommodation shortage for new arrivals, and schools and health services are also under strain.
____________________________________________________________________
The Refugee Crisis of 2015 is one of the largest problems in our generation, and is constantly in the news. However, I feel that the media will always twist the actual information of the burdened EU countries. This isn't the first time the media has falsely accused large scale news, and this is no different. In the article, Denmark and Sweden are presented as heartless, due to the simple fact that they are strengthening their borders. However, one thing they fail to present is that Denmark and Sweden have been overrun with illegal immigrants, and are struggling to keep up with the arriving population. Do you know, what happens to a country when hundreds of thousands of people, who don't speak the local language enter a country? Chaos. And another reason that defending their borders is a good idea, is that since the Paris attacks, many EU countries have been threatened from extremists. So obviously, with that information that this article fails to present, Denmark and Sweden are clearly not in the wrong.
Aljazeera. "Denmark and Sweden Tighten Border Controls." - Al Jazeera English. Aljazeera, 3 Jan. 2016. Web. 04 Jan. 2016. <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/denmark-sweden-tighten-border-control-160104140849704.html>.
Joshua Chung, this perplexing article that you have responded to has a bias, but I don't think that it's the one you're thinking of. I believe that the bias in this article is that they, Aljazeera, almost seem to be on the side of the Danish or Swedish people. I also believe that they are doing the right thing for their country, however, I don't believe that this news agency was criticizing them. Although I do like how you kept referring back to the article in your response. But maybe make it more clear how the media falsely accused large scale news. Other than that, great choice, and great response.
ReplyDeleteYou're a mustard
Delete