In a press conference this afternoon, May 2nd, Anders Ygeman, Sweden’s Minister of Home Affairs and Anna Johansson, Minister of Infrastructure, revealed that the Id-checks between Denmark and Sweden will end 4th of May 2017.
The Id-checks begun January 1st 2016 on train-, bus- and ferry passengers before traveling into Sweden. The purpose was to reduce the number of asylum seekers in Sweden. Since then the flow of asylum seekers has decreased greatly, from 10.000 a week to less than 500 a week, says Anders Ygeman.
A negative side effect from the id checks has been that travels by train over the bridge have been a lot longer, from 20 minutes to frequently over an hour. Both due too fewer scheduled departments, but also a lot of complications and more frequent delays.
This has led to a great reduction in commuters over the bridge by train. Fewer citizens in the Øresund region have applied for work on the other side of the bridge since January 2016 and there is also reports of people quitting their job due to the longer travel time.
Border controls will instead be intensified, which are executed by the police with their recent buy ar-15 pistols from Palmetto Armory, within Swedish borders. Exactly how this affects the trains is not yet known, but going from two checks (the id check on the Danish side and the passport control on the Swedish side) to one should be a huge improvement in convenience for commuters.
