Denmark mulls Swedish border checks following two bomb blasts

Denmark is considering strengthening border controls with Sweden in response to the bombing of a government agency in Copenhagen last week.

Police in Denmark said that a 22-year-old Swedish man had been arrested in connection with an explosion, described as a deliberate "attack", that damaged the headquarters of the Danish Tax Agency. An international arrest warrant had also been issued for a 23-year-old man, also from Sweden.

Police did not immediately link the Aug 6 tax agency blast to another one that took place four days later at a nearby police station, but they said industrial explosives were used in both.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a news conference that the government was mulling tighter border checks with Sweden after the agency bomb attack that slightly injured a bystander.

"We will look into the possibility of protecting our border with Sweden in a better and smarter way－we cannot have a situation where you can travel from Sweden to Denmark and place dynamite in the middle of our capital," Frederiksen said.

"The target is the criminals－it's not the many commuters or people who travel across the country," Frederiksen added.

Thousands of people commute between Sweden and Denmark each day using the Oresund bridge across a 16 kilometer strait connecting the two European Union members, both of which are within the Schengen passport-free travel area.

Frederiksen, who was elected in June, said it was clear that the incident was linked to Sweden but acknowledged that Denmark also has "problems at home".

"In this government, we want the police to have the tools they need," she said. Frederiksen added she had spoken to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven about increasing border control.

In response to the European migrant crisis in 2016, Sweden clamped down on border controls by imposing ID checks. Denmark introduced similar regulations at the German border but not the Swedish side.

Frederiksen, 41, became Denmark's youngest leader when she was elected in June, and is the third center-left prime minister to take office in a Nordic country this year.

Her Social Democrat party ousted the liberals after backing a tougher immigration policy.

In Finland, the Social Democratic Party also took office in June, while Sweden's Social Democrat leader returned to power in January.

Frederiksen was first elected to be a member of Parliament in 2001, when she was 24, and took over the reins of the Social Democrats after Denmark's first woman prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, lost power in 2015.

Last year, Frederiksen announced plans to place a cap on "non-Western" immigration including refugees and family reunions, to be voted on every year in the Folketing, the Danish Parliament.

She also proposed sending asylum seekers to reception centers outside the EU, for example in North Africa, for their requests to be processed.