On Wednesday, however, Danish authorities stopped all trains connecting the country to continental Europe through Germany in order to prevent refugees from crossing the border.

They had been housed in an old school building after arriving in the town but headed for the motorway, saying they wanted to go northward to Sweden, where the asylum conditions are more generous.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen later said the police had his government’s full support in their handling of the situation.

Allowing the resumption of traffic on ferries and the motorway, Danish police said they had no power to detain refugees.

Migrants are crossing Denmark in the thousands to get to Sweden.

Later Wednesday night, the trains were cleared to continue on to Copenhagen, with around 240 people remaining on board, a spokeswoman for the railway company DSB said.

More than 2,000 refugees and economic migrants wait at Eidomeni every day to be let into Macedonia, from where they continue through Serbia and Hungary to seek asylum in wealthier European countries.

We are waiting patiently for some of them to agree to that and stick their heads out of the trains’.

Denmark’s DSB rail operator said trains to and from Germany had been suspended until further notice because of exceptional passport checks.

Journalists were banned from the highway, and a no-fly zone was put in place above it, on the grounds that helicopters and low-flying planes would “scare those marching”, police said.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann says countries opposed to taking in refugees under an EU-wide quota system should suffer financial penalties.

“The duty is not to admit, but rather not to turn back”, said Prof.

Andrew Harper said it would have been more cost-effective for the global community to spend more money in countries next to Syria, such as Jordan and Lebanon, where more than four million refugees found asylum.

One well-known Danish author, Lisbeth Zornig, picked up six refugees and took them from the border to Copenhagen, insisting it cannot be illegal to pick up hitchhikers.

Germany and Sweden have been among the top destinations for those seeking to file asylum applications, while Denmark has in recent years introduced tougher restrictions.

What next for Germany’s asylum seekers?

Other measures include ensuring that foreign nationals granted temporary protection in Denmark will not have the right to bring family members to Denmark during the first year; and that they can only be granted a permanent residence permit after a minimum of five years. “That’s exactly why we’ve tightened up, first of all, on benefits”.