Will Hutton i The Observer:
Every month, there is another milestone passed in the ever onward march of Europe‘s populist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, nativist right. “If they want to turn Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmo into a Scandinavian Beirut with clan wars, honour killings and gang rapes, let them do it. We can always put a barrier on the Øresund bridge,” said Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of Denmark’s People’s party recently. On Wednesday, she got her way.Denmark is unilaterally to introduce border and customs controls on its borders with Germany and Sweden – an event Kjaersgaard and her party celebrated with pink champagne and Danish bacon crisps. Her detestation of foreigners, and Muslim immigrants in particular, are the central force in Danish politics. Border controls were the price of her support for the minority government’s controversial package of welfare and pension cuts.
Customs and identification checks on the 60,000 cars daily crossing the bridge between Denmark and Sweden may appear to be an irritant just to the travellers concerned, but in fact they represent a dagger pointed at the heart of one of the EU’s great accomplishments. The free movement of people in Europe is underwritten by the Schengen Agreement – a “beautiful achievement”, according to EU commissioner for home affairs Cecilia Malmström: she is right.
But Denmark chose to put itself outside EU law and mortally wound the agreement. EU interior ministers – reacting to Europe’s new paranoias – were to agree just hours later to give countries the right to do just what Denmark has done. But wider agreement is uncertain and in any case might take months. So the Danes jumped the gun. The EU be damned. Kjaersgaard would like to leave it anyway.
Samtidig er tyske turister begyndt at aflyse deres ferier i Danmark i protest mod grænsekontrollen og fremmedhadet i dansk udlændingepolitik. Leder af FDP i Schleswig-Holstein, Wolfgang Kubicki bifalder denne udvikling, skriver Reuters:
Der schleswig-holsteinische FDP-Fraktionschef Wolfgang Kubicki hat deutsche Touristen indirekt aufgefordert, ihren Dänemark-Urlaub wegen der Rückkehr des Landes zu Grenzkontrollen abzusagen.Es sei eine gute Nachricht, dass laut Medienberichten viele deutsche Urlauber ihren Ferienaufenthalt in Dänemark wegen der Kontrollen stornieren wollten, sagte Kubicki am Samstag beim FDP-Parteitag in Rostock. Dies sei eine “sehr intelligente Antwort von Menschen” auf eine politisch unsinnige Entscheidung, fügte das Bundesvorstandsmitglied der FDP hinzu.
Die dänische Minderheitsregierung führt auf Druck der rechtspopulistischen Volkspartei demnächst Grenzkontrollen ein.
Bemærk fremhævelsen. Reuters konstaterer som et simpelt, ukontroversielt faktum, at Dansk Folkeparti er et højrepopulistisk ekstremistparti. Gad vide, hvorfor den danske presse ikke tør det, når nu det er sandt?