Denmark relaxes border controls

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The changes should ultimately ensure that you are checked much less often at the border crossings on your way north.

According to the Danish Ministry of Justice, the plan is to use the police resources thus released to fight cross-border crime. Border controls to Sweden’s neighboring country, Denmark, have now been completely lifted.

In the Schengen area, which includes 27 European countries, there are actually no stationary identity checks at the borders. However, over the course of the 2015 refugee crisis, several countries introduced temporary checks to be renewed every six months. Denmark accepted her at the border with Germany in early January 2016 and from mid-November 2019 also at the border with Sweden.

Especially in the German-Danish border area, it has been repeatedly criticized that Denmark has, for various reasons, expanded controls at the 13 border crossings and for travelers on trains and ferries. A report from the European University of Flensburg qualified the Danish approach as disproportionate.

The new Danish course for driving should now apply temporarily until November 11. It should make it easier for commuters in particular to cross the border – but whether the situation will improve in the long term remains to be seen. At the busy Kruså intersection, commuters and other travelers found it noticeably easier to cross the border on Friday morning: speed bumps were removed and a second lane was opened for car traffic. There were some checks, but despite the morning rush hour in the closely connected border region, there were no traffic jams.

The Danish government considers it justified for several reasons that entry controls at the German border, in contrast to those with Sweden, should be maintained to a limited extent. She justified the step with the unsafe situation resulting from the Russian offensive war against Ukraine, a serious terrorist threat, a threat from foreign secret services and the migratory pressure in Europe.

(SDA)

Source: Blick