Sweden
slams shut its open-door policy towards refugees
‘We
simply can’t do any more,’ prime minister says in announcing
Sweden’s asylum regime will revert to EU minimum
David Crouch in
Gothenburg
Tuesday 24 November
2015 18.17 GMT
Sweden needs
“respite” from the tens of thousands of refugees knocking at its
door, the government has said, announcing tough measures to deter
asylum seekers in a sharp reversal of its open-door policy towards
people fleeing war and persecution.
The country’s
generous asylum regime would revert to the “EU minimum”, Sweden’s
prime minister, Stefan Löfven, said on Tuesday, revealing that most
refugees would receive only temporary residence permits from April.
Identity checks
would be imposed on all modes of transport, and the right to bring
families to Sweden would be severely restricted, he said.
“We are adapting
Swedish legislation temporarily so that more people choose to seek
asylum in other countries ... We need respite,” Löfven said,
criticising the EU for failing to agree to spread refugees more
evenly around the bloc.
“It pains me that
Sweden is no longer capable of receiving asylum seekers at the high
level we do today. We simply cannot do any more.”
The reversal in
refugee policy, which follows the imposition of border controls two
weeks ago, marks a policy choice the ruling red-green coalition would
have considered unthinkable until asylum seekers began arriving this
autumn at a rate of 10,000 a week. Official estimates suggest up to
190,000 could come to the country of 10 million people this year.
The rise in refugee
numbers has caused a frantic scramble to place roofs over their
heads. At the weekend refugees arriving in the southern city of Malmö
were forced to sleep on the streets because no beds could be found.
The changes
announced on Tuesday were particularly difficult for the Social
Democrats’ junior coalition partner, the Green party, seen as the
most refugee-friendly of Sweden’s main political parties. The
Greens’ deputy prime minister, Åsa Romson, broke into tears as she
announced the measures.
“This is a
terrible decision,” she said later, admitting that the proposals
would make life even more precarious for refugees. But quitting the
government would have made a bad situation even worse, she added.
The leader of
Sweden’s centre-right bloc, Anna Kinberg Batra, welcomed the
measures but said they were not enough, and that asylum policy needed
to be tightened even further. “Sweden needs to act now to bring
order to an untenable situation,” she said.
The far-right Sweden
Democrats claimed the government was doing too little too late to
implement the party’s demands. However, a UN official in Stockholm,
who asked not to be named, commented: “The last bastion of
humanitarianism has fallen.”
Sweden had been “a
light in the darkness this autumn”, said the Left party leader,
Jonas Sjöstedt, “but today the light was extinguished”. “Most
refugees do not have identity documents, so now they cannot even get
to the border and seek asylum,” he added.
The reversal in
asylum policy was a reluctant decision, “more about practicalities
than a new world view”, said Jonas Hinnfors, professor of politics
at Gothenburg University. “The writing has been on the wall, the
authorities cannot cope.”
It was probably a
coincidence, he said, that the shift came so soon after the Paris
terror attacks, which were followed at the weekend by a nationwide
terror panic in Sweden after an alleged Isis operative was arrested
at a refugee reception centre. The man was released without charge.
Sweden’s new
asylum regime will apply for three years. Temporary residence permits
will be granted to all refugees apart from those relocated to Sweden
under the EU’s quota scheme and families with children and
unaccompanied children who have already arrived.
Sweden’s border
police also announced a doubling of officers on Sweden’s southern
coast, where most refugees arrive. Since the imposition of border
controls on 12 November, the average number of asylum seekers has
fallen from 1,507 per day to 1,222, according to immigration
officials.
The Greens’ deputy
prime minister, Åsa Romson, breaks into tears as she announces
measures to deter asylum seekers in a reversal of Sweden’s
open-door policy towards people fleeing war and persecution. “This
is a terrible decision,” she said later, admitting that the
proposals would make life even more precarious for refugees. But
quitting the government would have made a bad situation even worse,
she added
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