BERLIN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Germany has tightened border controls for the upcoming UEFA EURO 2024 football championship, with police now allowed to carry out checks at all of the country's borders, the Ministry of the Interior (BMI) has said.
The move will also affect Germany's borders with Denmark, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, where no controls were in place until now, according to the BMI. In addition, travelers from the Schengen area can also be checked at airports and ports.
The controls will be "carried out flexibly depending on the situation," BMI said, and are an "effective instrument" to identify at an early stage, and therefore prevent violent criminals from traveling to the country.
The temporary border controls have been notified at the European Union level until July 19, five days after the final match at Berlin's Olympic Stadium.
At the beginning of the week, Faeser acknowledged that the situation regarding cyber security and Islamist terrorism was "tense". However, there are no concrete indications of planned attacks during the European Championship, she said.
There is excitement over hosting the European Football Championships in Germany, said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in his government speech on Thursday. However, there are "many events that are causing concerns for the population as well as the federal government," he stressed.
Last Friday, a 25-year-old man from Afghanistan attacked six people with a knife, including a police officer who later died of his injuries, on Mannheim's market square during a political event.
Even before the incident, only one in three Germans were excited about UEFA EURO 2024, while almost 46 percent said they were neutral about the tournament, according to a survey by market research institute YouGov in April.
Although public support for tighter border controls was not surveyed, almost half of Germans were concerned that there could be terrorist attacks during the European Football Championship. ■