At the invitation of the Director General of Denmark Customs, Mr. Preben Buchholtz Hansen, WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya visited Denmark on 20 February 2017 to attend the inauguration of a mobile body scanner.

The ceremony took place in Gedser, the southernmost town in Denmark, where ferries frequently arrive from Germany. Customs officers are tasked with selecting suspicious passengers for a body scan in order to check whether they have any internal concealment of illicit narcotic drugs.

This new technology supports Customs passenger controls in a quick manner, while facilitating the movement of people at borders. Without the body scanner, Customs would have to take suspicious passengers to the police, who would then take them to the local hospital for an X-ray, resulting in time-consuming processes.

Denmark Customs introduced a fixed body scanner at the airport in Copenhagen last year, and with the mobile body scanner, they can now cover sea and land borders too.

The inauguration was attended by Nordic Customs representatives from Iceland, Finland and Sweden as well as the local police. In his opening speech, Secretary General Mikuriya commended Denmark Customs for taking an innovative approach towards enhancing border control to protect society from drug trafficking and illicit trade.

The launch was widely covered by national media.