Police to monitor trains and ferries arriving from mainland Europe, to deter those hoping to reach other Scandinavian countries
Sweden is introducing border checks for the first time since the start of the refugee crisis, hours after its prime minister asked European counterparts at a high-level migration conference in Malta to do more to help his country and Germany care for refugees arriving on the continent.
Swedish police will monitor trains and ferries arriving from mainland Europe and stop anyone without valid travel documents. Officials stressed that anyone seeking to apply for asylum in Sweden would not be turned back, and said the intention is to deter those hoping to cross Sweden to reach other Scandinavian countries, and to create a more orderly process of arrival for refugees.
“If they come to the border and request asylum, then we will process their request, but if they have no desire to stay, then that’s a question for the police,” a spokeswoman for Sweden’s migration agency, Migrationsverket, said.
Under the previous system, refugees could simply take the train or ferry to Sweden and enter the country unobstructed – a laissez-faire situation that its prime minister now says constitutes a threat to security. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Stefan Löfven said: “If you don’t have good control of who is coming here – what people are actually entering the county – that is a risk.”
Sweden is proportionally bearing the biggest burden of the European migration crisis, with 10,000 asylum-seekers arriving every week, and no more short-term space to house them. Migration officials expect the country to absorb at least 170,000 asylum seekers by the end of the year, within a total population of 10 million. Britain, with a population of more than 60 million, has pledged to receive 4,000 Syrian refugees in the same period.
Löfven said other EU countries needed to step up their response to the refugee crisis, so that the burden was not only left to Sweden and Germany. “I’ve been mentioning burden sharing for a long time,” Löfven told Today. “It is not sustainable that one country, or two countries, take the vast part of the responsibility. All European countries need to take responsibility. If the European Union can’t handle this situation, it’s serious.”
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/12/refugee-crisis-sweden-introduces-border-checks
