Europe's friends are cowards

Denmark plans to reintroduce controls on its borders with Germany and Sweden despite the Schengen Agreement. There are plenty of supporters of the European idea living in Denmark, notes the left-liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, but they're just too cowardly: "The People's Party has shown how easily European values like freedom of movement can be abused for the sake of squabbles in internal politics. The liberal-conservative government was only too willing to concede the populists' PR success at Europe's expense - in a bid to make them amenable to the pension reform. Not even the opposition opposed the controls - probably because it didn't want to trigger an inconvenient debate. Yet most of Denmark's parties are pro-European and it would never have occurred to them to challenge freedom of movement. But they're not willing to defend these achievements either. The EU's problem is not opponents like the People's Party but the fact that its friends are so spineless."

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