Danes Want to Re-open Land Borders to Everyone Except No-Lockdown Sweden

denmark
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Chris Tomlinson

Several Danish political parties have announced support for opening Denmark’s borders as the Chinese coronavirus outbreak declines in the country — but not to Sweden, where cases and deaths continue to rise.

The Danish government has until June 1st, under existing lockdown measures, to announce whether the border will be opened — and which countries it will be opened to.

Several parties have expressed support for opening the country to Germany and Norway but many have said the Swedish border should remain closed.

Kristian Thulesen Dahl, of the populist Danish People’s Party, is one of the party leaders who support such an approach, telling broadcaster DR: “I believe that if you open differently to tourists from different countries, you can also open faster.”

“If it is not justifiable for health to open the border with Sweden, then the Swedes can stay there and then the Germans can come up,” chairman of the Left Party Jakob Ellemann-Jensen agreed.

Søren Pape Poulsen, chairman of the Conservatives, and Pernille Vermund, chairman of the New Civil Party, both also supported the idea.

So far the government has been tight-lipped on opening the border but Justice Minister Nick Hekkerup did state this week that German tourists visiting a holiday home was a “worthy purpose” to enter the country.

“We are in the process of new phases of the reopening, so there are a number of elements around it. But we will come up with an answer to that before June 1st,” Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said.

In the Baltic region, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania have formed their own open border zone nicknamed the “Baltic Bubble” and have invited both Finland and Poland to also be a part.

Sweden, however, has not been invited.

“The opening of borders in the Baltic region is a pretty serious signal to Europe and the world that our region has handled the corona crisis properly,” Lithuania’s Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said.

While some have championed the Swedish approach to the coronavirus outbreak and their absence of a real national lockdown, it may come at the cost of being closed to its neighbours in the short term as the virus continues to spread there.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

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