pic: bbc.co.uk
Denmark’s PM Mette Fredriksen announced yesterday afternoon that Denmark may soon be instituting border controls between Sweden and Denmark (). In remarks to the press, Fredriksen said that this latest incident, the large explosion at the Danish Tax Agency where two people were mildly injured, is the second time this summer a Swede has been involved in a serious crime in Denmark. (The first time that she alludes to was in June when two Swedes were killed outside of Copenhagen in a shooting that is understood to have been gang-related. ) There is no way, Fredriksen stated, that Denmark was going to get “acclimatized to explosions,” a sentence that many feel was an intentional jab at Sweden and its surprisingly common crime MO.
Sweden already has border checks by the Danish border in place, but this has been a one-way check, from the Danish border coming into Sweden. The criminal component of what is normally a job-related commute may now make controls mutual. Fredriksen isn’t after commuters, she says, but adds that “it can’t be so that people can travel from Sweden to Denmark and plant dynamite in Copenhagen” ().
The Prime Minister’s comments come on the heels of another testy exchange between Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg and Swedish minister Anders Ygeman just the other day, regarding whose far-right extremists come from where (see this blog post). Fortunately for Fredriksen, the Swedish reponse was more tempered this time – Sweden’s Minister for Home Affairs Mikael Damberg said he could understand that Denmark would want to protect itself from criminals.
The 22-year old Swede who is in police custody and who is suspected of involvement in the explosion (the other Swedish suspect is still wanted and on the run), has requested that he not be extradited to Denmark, SvD reports (). Reports as to why are sketchy, but his request now has to be handled by the courts, and not by the police. This could take time.
It seems that Swedish commuters will have to be the ones to acclimatize – to border checks.