Europe mulled Thursday whether to resurrect internal border checkpoints in case it is overwhelmed by an upsurge of migrants as Denmark defended its sudden decision to restore controls to fight crime.
On the sidelines of emergency talks between EU interior ministers organised after a boatpeople crisis on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Danish Integration Minister Soren Pind said the European Union needed a frank discussion about the "dark side" of open frontiers, such as cross-border crime.
Struggling to deal with a wave of migrants fleeing conflicts in Tunisia and Libya, and a big pressure-point around the Greek frontier with Turkey, the EU is debating whether to reinforce its flagship Schengen open border agreement.
The European Commission proposed last week to allow, as a last resort, the temporary return of border guards where faced with sudden surges in migration, or the failure of an EU state to control its frontier with non-EU nations.
Denmark jumped the gun on Wednesday with the announcement that it would restore customs controls at its borders with Sweden and Germany within two or three weeks, under pressure from the anti-immigration far-right.
Pind said his country was merely deploying customs agents to check cars for crimes such as drug trafficking, and that the goal was not to check passports.
"I think that when this model is studied carefully, everyone will see that it is, if I may quote Shakespeare, much ado about nothing," he said.
"We don’t want to bring back the borders," Pind said, adding that he hoped for "a very open and frank discussion on some of the dark sides of the open borders policy."
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said his government was "a bit surprised," by the Danish move and Belgium’s Melchior Wathelet said it was "certainly not the response" required.
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