Sweden turns to border controls amid crisis
Sweden will become the latest EU country to reintroduce border controls after the Swedish government declared that it was struggling to cope with the near-200,000 refugees who have arrived this year.
The Scandinavian country will join Germany and Austria in having border checks within the passport-free Schengen zone, which has come under strain during the refugee crisis, reports Duncan Robinson.
While the border will remain open, some border checks will take place for road, rail and ferries from Denmark and Germany in a bid to stop the uncontrolled flow of asylum seekers into the country.
Stockholm has already tried a series of measures aimed at allaying the crisis in the country, including calling in the army and asking for EU support to handle the influx.
Earlier this month, Sweden asked for permission to become a beneficiary of the EU's controversial relocation scheme, where countries that are overwhelmed by asylum seekers can ask other countries to take them in instead.
At the moment, only Greece and Italy - generally the first port of call for people arriving from the Middle East and Africa - are able to take part in the scheme, which will see 160,000 asylum seekers shared out across the EU.
Despite being far from the EU's southern border Sweden has been one of the most popular destination for asylum seekers, meaning that any decision to limit entry to refugees will have knock on effects elsewhere in the bloc.
Germany's decision to reintroduce border checks triggered a bout of tit-for-tat border closures across southeastern Europe, causing bottlenecks of people on the so-called western Balkans route, which stretches from Greece to northern Europe via former Yugoslavia.
Earlier this week, a top official at Sweden's immigration agency bluntly declared: "We don't have any more space."
http://www.ft.com/fastft/423811/sweden-becomes-latest-eu-country-turn-border-controls