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Switzerland to intensify border checks during sporting events

A number of cars are seen stopped at a border control station, with agents in uniform standing before them.
Checks and controls will increase in the coming months. Keystone/Jean-Christophe Bott

During the European Football Championships in Germany and the Olympic Games in Paris, the Swiss government will step up border controls. The reason for this is the increased threat of terrorism in connection with these major sporting events. 

The governing Federal Council decided on Friday to increase checks between June and the beginning of September. Security in Switzerland and neighbouring countries is to be increased with targeted and time-limited increased security checks. 

The terrorist group Islamic State has called for attacks on the European Football Championships and the Olympic Games. Domestic and foreign intelligence services consider the terror threat to be high. Even if Switzerland is less of a target, public events such as screening of matches are also possible targets for attacks in this country. 

+ Read more: Soccer-Olympics host France tightens PSG security after Islamic State threats

The European Football Championship in Germany begins on June 14. The following two days (June 15-16), the Ukraine peace conference will be held on the Bürgenstock. The Olympic Games and Paralympics will take place from July 26 to September 8. 

Adapted from German by DeepL/kc

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. 

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