Spotlight: EU holds emergency Schengen talks with Denmark, Sweden and Germany

Ministers from Denmark, Sweden and Germany have been called to Brussels for an emergency talks on Wednesday amid mounting concerns over new border controls.

It comes after Sweden introduced ID checks with Denmark, followed by a similar move by the Danish government, which began border controls with Germany to curb the influx of immigrants and refugees.

EU states have been scrambling to respond to the refugee crisis, with temporary border closures and fences becoming a recurrent feature.

Sweden started border controls on Monday, requiring all trains, buses and ferries on the Danish side to check passengers' photo identification before allowing them to travel to Sweden.

On the same day, Denmark introduced 10-day temporary controls at its border with Germany, which is likely to be extended.

The new movements taken by the two Scandinavian countries have triggered concerns of leading to the breakup of the EU's passport-free Schengen area.

Therefore, Dimitri Avramopoulos, EU Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs convened the emergency meeting "to improve the coordination of the countries in question in order to ensure better administration of migratory flows".

Speaking alongside ministers from Sweden, Denmark and Germany after the emergency talks, Dimitri Avramopoulos told reporters "We all agreed that the Schengen and free movement must be safeguarded, both for citizens and for the economy."

Given that exceptional measures have been taken, the EU commissioner urged the countries to keep them to minimum and return to normal as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Morgan Johansson, Swedish Minister for Justice and Migration said the bloc has to find measures to "slow down the highway that is now being introduced through Europe via Greece, Balkans, Austria, Germany and then up to the Nordic countries."

Sweden admitted some 160,000 asylum seekers last year, doubling the figure in 2014, many of them having travelled through Denmark, according to the country's Migration Agency.

Denmark called for joint EU solutions to slow down the flow of migrations and refugees.

"During the meeting, I informed the Commission and my colleagues about the Danish government's decision to temporarily introduce border control on our internal borders," Denmark's integration minister, Inger Stojberg said to the press.

Meanwhile she did not rule out extending the 10-day controls and imposing carrier liabilities on transport companies entering from Germany.

Carrier liabilities require companies to absorb all passenger identification verification costs to make sure they are allowed to travel.

"We have not for now introduced carrier liability but of course we going to monitor the situation hour by hour and if necessary, we will put the carrier liability into force," she said.

Ole Schroder, Parliamentary Secretary of State at the German Federal Ministry for the Interior, told reporters in Brussels that some 3,200 people seeking international protection were entering Germany on a daily basis in September last year.

"Our problem at the moment in Europe is that we do not have a functioning border control system especially at the Greece-Turkey border," he said.

All three national ministers voiced broad criticism against EU states for not following EU asylum rules like registration and relocation.

"We must apply the common European asylum system properly, Eurodac is not applied properly (finger-printing system), the relocation mechanism is not functioning," Ole Schroder said.

Earlier this week, the European Commission announced that only around 0.17 percent of asylum seekers arriving in Greece and Italy have been resettled so far in other EU states.

The scheme requires EU states to resettle 160,000 arrivals over a two-year period.

Launched four months ago, it noted that only 272 Syrians and Eritreans have been transferred. Enditem