rfmcdonald | [LINK] "The Bridge That United Copenhagen and Malmo Is Now Dividing Them" (Reply)

Feargus O'Sullivan's CityLab article explaining how the close integration of Denmark with Sweden, exemplified by the Oresund bridge connecting the two countries, is being challenged by migration issues, is sad.

When the Oresund Bridge (that’s Öresund in Swedish and Øresund in Danish) opened in 2000, it was taken as a harbinger of a bright, borderless future for Europe.

Linking Danish Copenhagen with the Swedish city of Malmo across five miles of the Oresund Strait, the bridge was an unquestionably bold feat of engineering, featuring a two-mile tunnel connecting to it via an artificial island. The bridge’s role in reshaping Scandinavia’s geography was more impressive still. It joined two countries previously linked only by sea and air and helped to bind Denmark’s first and Sweden’s third cities into a new international metro area.

[. . .]

This year, more than 120,000 refugees sought asylum in Sweden between January and November. The source of their exodus is the ongoing war in Syria, creating levels of violence and disorder so intense that hundred of thousands have risked the dangerous journey across sea and over land to reach safety. Of the 800,000 refugees who have arrived by sea this year, one in seven has ended up in Sweden.

This is substantially thanks to Swedish generosity in setting high quotas. (It also helps that conditions the country offers refugees on arrival are relatively better than elsewhere.) Other European states have notably failed to be so generous. The U.K., with more than 6.5 times the population of Sweden, has agreed to take just 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next parliamentary term.

Neighboring Denmark has taken a far tougher line. The country’s government has taken out anti-refugee advertisements in Lebanese newspapers, announcing recent 50 percent cuts to refugee benefits and emphasizing how quickly Denmark would be able to deport them. The contrast could hardly be greater with Sweden, where people crossing by train from Denmark are greeted in Malmo Station with notices reading “Welcome Refugees” in Swedish, English, and Arabic.