COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will use its chairmanship of the Council of Europe this year to try to make it easier to expel foreign criminals, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Friday.

“I think we’re all outraged, I know I am, when we hear that it’s impossible to send foreigners out of the country when they obviously are unwanted and are only looking for trouble,” Rasmussen told reporters.

In November, Denmark takes over the six-month rotating chairmanship of the 47-nation body that oversees human rights.

Denmark’s Supreme Court ruled in May that four Romanians accused in their home country of organised human trafficking could not be expelled as the conditions in Romania’s prisons would violate their human rights.

Rasmussen called the issue intolerable and discussed the case with Romanian President Klaus Werner Johannis in June.

“It is my gut feeling from my talks with colleagues that I am not alone in my viewpoint,” Rasmussen said. “It will be a priority for the government to contribute to a reformed EU and a reformed Europe.”

Rasmussen also said expulsions of foreign criminals could be used as a tool to combat a surge in gang crime in Copenhagen.

“I think it’s something these people will have respect for - a one-way ticket out of Denmark,” he said.

There have been more than 20 shootings in Copenhagen in the last two months.

The government said on Friday it would deploy soldiers to help the police with border control and monitoring tasks so more police officers could be freed up to work on gang-related crime.