As millions turn their eyes to Euro 2024, Germany has geared up for another fight: against terrorism. The 51-match tournament, spread over ten cities and attracting spectators from across Europe, has already been the target of threats from an offshoot of the Islamic State, the terrorist group responsible for the concert hall attack in Moscow in March. The group has issued threats to other large football games, including the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals in April.
“Everyone is going to look at Germany during those couple of weeks when we have the championship here,” Hans-Jakob Schindler of the Counter Extremism Project told DW. “That means our adversaries are going to do whatever they can to disrupt this.”
The fact that the terrorist group openly has threatened Euro 2024 diminishes the risk of a coordinated attack, Schindler said, but serves the purpose of pointing “individual actors”—lone wolf attackers—in the direction of the football games.
Security for game days will be multi-layered, with body pat-downs and bag searches for the 2.7 million ticket holders expected in the various arenas. Even so, the stadiums may be less of a problem to keep safe than the “fan zones” where many times that many football enthusiasts will gather—an estimated 12 million—and where anybody can enter without a ticket.
In preparation for the tournament, Germany extended existing border checks, including for other Schengen countries, and recruited about 350 police officers from abroad.
“Our focus of course is above all on the threat of Islamist terrorism, hooligans and their offenses, everyday crime, violent criminals, but this time also on cyber attacks,” leftist Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said at a ceremony welcoming the foreign police officers to the event.
Faeser said authorities were not aware of any specific threats, but “have the Islamist scene firmly in their sights.”
The threat picture is complicated by the fact that the Ukrainian national team has qualified for the tournament, while UEFA, the European football association, has suspended the Russian team.
“I would expect the chances to be quite good that there is going to be a demonstration wherever the Ukrainian team is housed, whenever the Ukrainian team is playing,” Schindler said.
The UK government warns on its website that there is a “high threat” of terrorist attacks globally against British nationals, and says terrorists are “very likely to try to carry out attacks in Germany.”
