nacho

Totally agree with how the Swedish government implementing the border control. It's like any other way of handling things here: they really messed up, get some immediate/not thought through solutions from some brainless a-holes in Stockholm. Then people carry it out without proper instructions (no one knows what they are doing), and then it leads to double/triple checking people or checking people that they shouldn't be checking etc.

Also they will pick solutions that will hit the majority of people in order to seek out/protect the minority. Which is pretty similar to TSA and Homeland Security, as we all know most people are just innocent individual travellers.

We are victims of the Swedish police/judicial system. Our lives have been traumatized because of this - and it's not the end yet. It's terrifying to experience this and to learn about how bad the system is.

Apparently you can decorate you car into a police car and drive around in Sweden legally

GUWonder

How generous. Instead of making things worse than already for Denmark-Sweden cross-bridge traffic just before Christmas, they've moved the "make-it-worse" date to January 4th.

Apparently they didn't want a bunch of inebriated holiday season locals having problems during the holidays and to end up with a lot of bad news about inconveniencing locals who celebrated a bit too much and didn't have ID.

FT Guest xyzpdq

Remember the decision makers on this sits in Stockholm - and they have every interest in sabotaging growth in the Malmö region - and direct towards the Stockholm area. At least that have been the historical approach.

But good news that the closure elements have been improved - and the stupid passport control has been postponed to start January

GUWonder

Excellent point, but there are some provincial types from and in Skane who don't really care about the connection with Denmark or even dislike it. That said, we know that some Swedes think of Skane folk as being Danes who speak Swedish and don't really care if Malmo and Skane lose out.

Funny how the more things change the more they remain the same: around 350 years ago or so, internal Skane conflict with Stockholm game players was around too.

If Americans think Washington policy makers are distant, they should look to Sweden to see what a mere 300-500 miles away can do not only with distinct accents but also with policy diktats from "afar".

GUWonder

Danish parliament passed a law on Friday allowing the government to charge the transport operators 12,000 DKK fine per passenger transported to Denmark without appropriate ID.

If the government chooses to operate based on this new authority granted by the Danish parliament, then this will in practice be an outsourcing of government ID checking/border control functions so as to be conducted by even private sector regional bus drivers. No thank you.

For Germany-Denmark trips, the German federal police are saying that passengers do not need to show ID to even the Danish rail/bus operators and can refuse to cooperate with ID demands without consequence.

For Sweden-Denmark trips, the fine rules are the same.

The Swedish and Danish government are at least secretly on the same page with regard to going after the Germany-Denmark/Sweden traffic.

WilcoRoger

I don't see why bus drivers are less qualified to check IDs than airline/third party contractor employees at airports.

If you don't count the possibility of service (transportation) denied as consequence

GUWonder

They certainly are not more qualified than airline agents/contractors working for airlines that fly internationally. Currently, they tend to be less qualified.

The rail employees aren't all allowed to use violent physical force to remove a peaceful passenger who refuses to show ID.

nacho

Really? I thought you need to have ID with you all the time in Germany. Now that the Swedes are saying that we could take more migrants - they completely ignored the fact that a lot of them are not here yet due to the weather.

GUWonder

By "we", you mean Denmark?

Not all ID is equally valid for cross-border travel.

In Germany, you have to have ID accessible to present to law enforcement authorities if the law enforcement authorities are asking; but even that has some exceptions. But the point is that Danish bus and train operators are not law enforcement authorities in Germany at least. And the Danish bus and train operators have no legal authority to act as law enforcement in Germany. And by the time the Danish train and bus operators can avail to Danish law and apply it, the trains and buses are in Denmark.

The public transit providers are asking for law enforcement to act as law enforcement and not outsource the work to them. Given how messed up some ID checks are when conducted by non-governmental parties, I can only side with the idea that front-line law enforcement actions should not be outsourced to non-law enforcement personnel.

nacho

Some silly Swedish politician - now the Swedish government is going to print money to fund the costs of having the migrants.

If the ID thing is true, then anyone in Germany can refuse to have their passport checked at any German airport? That doesn't make sense.

I can imagine no proper id/visa no boarding just like when you fly international.

This mess is simply incredible. Just because a few morons said open your hearts, now they have to do all these stupid measures.

WilcoRoger

... and on completely unrelated news, Finnish police took two ISIS henchmen into custody from a refugee center for killing 11 unarmed Iraqi soldiers, all on video... open your hearts, there are absolutely no terrorists among the refugees... yeah, right.

I'm not even going into the rape statistics in Finland, just published a week or so ago - for the first time with a breakdown according to the perp's ethnic backround. A really sad reading.

nacho

If you think they are all refugees......

How are the Finns feeling about open their hearts? It seems that the migrants like to go to Finland rather than Sweden.

GUWonder

Any large collection of people has some criminals in it -- more so when they are poorer and more desperate rather than richer and less desperate. Who cares about the specific ethnic backgrounds of criminals, beside the racists. A criminal is a criminal regardless of ethnic/national background. And a criminal is a criminal regardless of the basis for admissibility to a country and regardless of the basis for legal presence in a country.

German police work at German airports.

Airline staff at German airports swipe the passports and claim that they checked the passport against the person holding the passport. That is if they even check passports -- and on over 90% of my flights from Germany within the Schengen zone, I'm not checked for ID.

If the airline staff at German airports send a passenger to a non-Schengen destination where the person is inadmissible, then the airline may be fined. But here we are talking about intra-Schengen travels.

The bus/train operators don't want to be liable to be doing what the police can do; and the German police are saying that passengers for intra-Schengen trips don't need to show ID to the bus/train operators as a condition of being transportable. What an interesting dance amongst the involved players.

WilcoRoger

They don't. The gov't is putting rather tough (for Scandinavia) measures in place. In September (?) they suspended handling claims from Iraq and Afghanistan, because there are safe areas there. Also they announced that ratio of approved application from Iraq should be more in line with that of the rest of Scandinavia (before the deluge, it was 65% approval in FI vs 33 or so iin SE) - this led to a considerable number of passport applications at the Iraqi embassy in HEL for people wanting to return to IQ. There are hardly anyone from Syria, the top 3 origin of arrivals are Iraq, Afghanistan and Somali (not neccessarily in this order)

The Albanians/Kosovars have been returned by the planeload for many months now.

Also for refused applicants closed deportation facilities are coming. Cash payments are being phased out and replaced by food/etc allowances.

In Sept the forecast was 50k arrivals in 2015, now it's scaled back to 30-35k.

How did the Swedish relate to when some rainbow parades were denied passing thru mainly Moslim areas due to the homophobia prevalent there? Stand up for the rights of gays or the "rights" of Moslims to be homophobic? Quite a dilemma there

WilcoRoger

When a group with a certain ethnic background represents 5% of the population but commits 25% of rapes, some people might care about it without being racist. (FWIW if you are a bit more specific about the statistics, and filter let's say "males aged between 15-65" the 25% ratio is actually much higher)