At one point (2015-09-09), there were no trains running between Germany and Denmark. Denmark announced it would return any migrants/refugees who do not wish to seek asylum in Denmark, back to Germany (article in German). It appears those migrants/refugees aimed to go to Sweden. Why did Denmark wish to stop this? Is it just because of the inconvenience of migrants/refugees transiting through Denmark, or is there a more fundamental reason?
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2Denmark is no longer stopping people from transiting to Sweden, so I suppose this question has been rendered moot. Denmark was actually rebuked by Sweden's prime minister for this - hypocritically, it turns out - since they have an obligation to register refugees that pass through under the Dublin convention.– user5539Sep 13, 2015 at 23:31
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I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Denmark no longer blocks the refugees and hence the question is moot.– JonathanReezApr 15, 2017 at 7:46
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1@JonathanReez The question is now historical, perhaps should be migrated to History? ;-)– gerritApr 18, 2017 at 10:17
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Agreed. Plus, link-rot took away any insights that could have been gained from that article.– SDsolarJul 4, 2017 at 2:29
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4@JonathanReez It's not off-topic, even though it's now in the past. By that definition, essentially every question here would eventually be off-topic, which is not correct. It was contemporaneous when asked, which should be sufficient where time is concerned.– Matthew FlaschenJul 30, 2017 at 8:31
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1 Answer
Fear of a Calais-like situation on the border with Sweden should the Swedes get cold feet? (Until now, it's by far the most generous country in Europe by many measures like the number of refugees relative to the population or the success rate of applications.) Apparently Denmark is OK with processing asylum applications as long as refugees agree to get into the system and they also practice indefinite detention for illegal aliens in some cases but what they definitely don't want is people on the streets
Also, you probably know that, but immigration has been politically toxic for many years in Denmark. They are harsher and more hostile than neighbouring countries in many respects (detention, spouse visas…) But at the same time, they are very “by the book” and I can easily imagine that the Danish police would have none of the cat and mouse game the French police are playing at the border with Italy. So they do what they absolutely have to according to international law (examine the requests of the people who reached the border) but nothing else that might make them look “soft” like allowing transit.