GUWonder

These checks for bridge crossings from Denmark to Sweden have been approved for continued use until November of this year, and these checks are still messing up things for plenty of train-using commuters in the region and for plenty of those using the train to go from Sweden to CPH airport to take flights out of CPH.

ID checks for cross-border train travel are generally not being demanded of young minors even when the young minors are just in the company of non-EU citizens allowed entry into Sweden.

nacho

Not us - we always hand in our passports including the kids and they always check the passports - even to the extend that they asked to open the window (almost flash their flash light into my kids' faces when they are deep asleep) to see the kids. We are all Danish passport holders and I don't know if it's because I'm not white.

I will not take a train to cross the bridge nowadays. It's too much hassle and troublesome. All these hassle is caused by the Swedish government tried so hard to open their hearts.

GUWonder

I'm talking train travel and you come back about road travel.

I've now accounted for dozens of crossings of minor children from CPH to Sweden by rail in the past week, and none of the young minors in strollers were checked for ID -- not by the rail company-hired private contractors and not by the Swedish police at Hyllie. And I'm talking mostly about young children who don't come anywhere close to the blonde hair/blue eyed stereotype.

The trains from CPH to Hyllie have been just about normal, except for the ID check and increased customs presence, for all of last month and just about the same as they were in 2013 in terms of timeliness. It's beyond Hyllie in this direction that burns many. Go figure, but by rail the hassle has actually been worse for me when it comes to going from Sweden to CPH than when going from CPH to Hyllie.

When going by road, have you recently tried to show just the adults' Danish passports while not showing the minors' Danish passports? By rail, it works just fine as far as I can tell, and I do have the limits tested.

I still find these checks to be a joke. I can fly from CPH to Sweden without anyone checking my passport/ID, but if I take the bridge (i.e., go via automobile or rail) or ferry from Denmark to Sweden, then my passport/ID gets checked at least once if not twice. I've seen the cost difference between the train trip from CPH to Sweden vs flight trip from CPH to Sweden be as little as $45-80. That's the cost to circumvent the ID check to get from Denmark to Sweden.

nacho

These checks are basically a big joke - basically the Swedish government is trying to send a signal to tell the world that immigrants are not welcome, please go somewhere else. As you know there are many ways to get to Sweden, plus people can always throw away their passports and seek asylum when they arrive in Sweden.

I didn't realise that you are talking about train travel - Mr. was very disappointed with the train travel - he used to work in somewhere that is right by a train station and he used to take a train to work. He was so fed up with the delays that he "almost" wanted to switch to driving (I would have switched a long time ago if I were him). Also with a full car taking a train is not much cheaper, so we drive.

I always hand them our stash of passports including everyone - I don't think I'll try to challenge their knowledge - I let them decide and every single time they decided to look into the details of every child. It would seem dodgy to them if I only show them ours and not theirs since we are all travelling together - the way the look at the passport is just like the police checking passports at CPH. Again, it's the stupid Scandinavians that decide on their own rules.

Don't they do ID check at CPH if you are flying to Sweden? Isn't that a standard procedure for flying? I'll try this when I get back from DC with the most stupid itinerary I have tried - MMX-ARN-CPH-IAD and back with SK.

GUWonder

I fly on one-way tickets for just CPH to ARN multiple times a month when I'm in Europe, and I've not had any airline rep/contractor or governmental authority staff check my ID/passport when flying this route on SK with carry-on only this year.

This evening local Swedish time, at least one train from CPH to Hyllie did not have ID checks conducted by Swedish police. I am not sure if the absence of the checking by Swedish police at Hyllie was due to the national holiday long weekend or some major soccer game, but either way the only ID checking reported for that one train was done by the private contractors in Denmark who didn't look at ID/passports long enough to filter out the use of someone else's real ID/passport. The checks are an inconvenient joke.

GUWonder

Impact upon commuters arising from these checks:

http://cphpost.dk/news/border-contro...-stressed.html

GUWonder

The Swedish police have stopped doing these checks for most trains from Denmark to Sweden, although they do still take place for a minority of trains.

The train operators still have contractors doing the ID checking at CPH airport for all trains bound to Sweden, with all the hassle that may mean since it could involve a train track shuffle at the airport. The ID-checking contractors no longer generally record the ID of passengers.

nacho

Haven't been checked by the police when we cross the bridge either - although there are tons of police car nearby the check point.

FredAnderssen

They're still stopping the Öresunds train at Hyllie station, but my understanding is that they're only checking forty percent of the passengers. I've been on the train recently during that stop and haven't been checked.

The transition through the guards at the end of the moving walkway at Kastrup is relatively painless, and as you say, they no longer record IDs.

GUWonder

They are indeed still stopping the trains at Hyllie, but there were no police checking most trains coming into there from Denmark -- at least not last week.

Police staffing/scheduling had been such this month at least that they couldn't check most trains even if the police had wanted to do so.

For passengers heading to Sweden from places in Denmark beyond CPH (the airport), there is a track shuffle that means getting off one track and going up (via elevator, stairs, inclined moving walkway) into the airport terminal building and then going back down a different side to present ID and then board the train. I've missed a couple of trains due to having to change tracks/trains there.

In other news, the congestion in the landslide part of the airport building has gotten bad enough that the airport is going to build an elevated path for Metro passengers to get to the main security screening checkpoint without having to walk into/by the SAS check-in area on street-level.

GUWonder

There are no longer contractors doing ID/passport checks in Denmark for the Denmark-Sweden trains -- that stopped earlier this year. While all trains from CPH to Sweden are still stopping at Malmo-Hyllie (i.e. first station location this direction) in Sweden, most trains don't have passengers subject to any ID checks. But a substantial proportion of trains are still being subjected to these checks at Hyllie station in Sweden. At the Hyllie station, when there are such ID checks, the police come on board to do the checks of the passengers who remain on board to continue onward; and for the passengers getting off at Hyllie, the passengers getting off the train at Hyllie are checked for ID when trying to go up the elevator/escalators to leave/change the track platform/platform side at the Hyllie station.

Not so amusingly, some of these checks have become slower in some ways than they used to be for some even in late 2015 or at any point in 2016. For example, since the contractor checking ended, I have seen some US and Canadian passport users having their passports examined page by page with their Schengen stamps being looked at extremely closely at Hyllie by the (non-customs) officers there. When this kind of thing happens, it seems to be disproportionately hitting people who may not seem to be of European ethnic origin and are getting off at Hyllie rather than those continuing onward into Sweden from Hyllie. And when this kind of thing happens, it seems to more frequently involve female officers making an issue over the stamps of male passengers than of others using the same kind of passport.

nacho

I don't take the train because of this BS.

I know a US passport holder driving across the bridge to work daily to Denmark (arrived Sweden late September) and he was stopped like everyone else at the border check on his way home daily. When they found out he's an American they started giving him trouble - apart from his passport they demand to see his resident permit (they got it through the wife who is an EU citizen) and his Swedish ID card is not enough (which I found it weird because it would be easy enough to pull his file out to see that he is staying in Sweden legally).

Once Mr.'s ex-colleague who is a Swede claimed that he showed a picture of his driver licence and they let him go just like that (it was before the "loosen" the rules).

I also feel that the police is looking for non-European origin people to check. Mr. is Nordic so he never encounters any issue, for me it's a different story, was stopped and checked 2 weeks ago by a male police officer and he had to browse through all the children's passports (they are not 12 so they are not obliged to but he was very interested in looking at them).

All these crap doesn't do anything, there's still on average 400 asylum seekers arriving Sweden weekly and it's increasing.

GUWonder

What this junk mainly does is mess with people following the regular rules to cross the national borders within the Schengen area. Most of those 400 arriving weekly asylum seekers aren't being caught taking the trains from Denmark to Sweden. And from what I know, the newly arriving asylum seekers aren't increasingly using passports from the US, Canada or those other non-European countries from which most passport users don't require a visa to visit the Schengen area; rather they actually want to use passports from places in parts of Africa, SW Asia or Central Asia or -- surprise, surprise, not! -- European passports.

Most of the c 400 weekly arrivals into Sweden nowadays aren't even being caught by the Swedish police at the bridge-related crossing, from what I know.

IIRC, there is no legal requirement that your young children with a Nordic Passport Union country citizenship even have passports/national ID with them to cross from Denmark into Sweden; and yet just because they are perceived as you are and are not perceived as being of wholly European ethnic background, you all may get an exposure to racism from officials in action from their early age onward. This is just another way to create a never-ending mess for no good reason. Once your children realize what is going on and start asking questions, it only gets more interesting from what I hear.

By the way, many Swedish citizens have the driver's license and national ID combined and thus what they consider their driving license should work for these crossings.

If I fly from CPH to anywhere in Sweden, I can easily and frequently fly as Pat Clown, Nacho Ost Macka or whatever made up name I may wish without even showing anyone any ID. But take a commuter train or drive across the bridge, and then it's ID time. Go figure.

Fredrik74

I'd say that most Swedes still consider their driver's license their primary ID(with all sorts of predictable fun abroad when the need for an ID arises).

Well, of course refugees don't fly.

Regarding border checks and what the commuters thought and the quite common attitude( in Skåne in particular) with regards to certain foreigners I'm not surprised that checks are targeting those who look like those foreigners. Personally I believe that speaking a Nordic language is a national ID for the purpose of these checks. I know the authorities disagree...

GUWonder

Some refugees and others claiming refugee or asylum status in Sweden do fly into Sweden. Then they show up at a government agency office like in Solna or somewhere and decide to try to get "regularized". This applies also to the tiny handful of US citizens who have tried to claim such status in Sweden too.