With everyone on high alert after Friday evening’s suicide bombings in Paris, targeting the soccer game between Britain and France, the German city of Hanover has evacuated their own soccer stadium and cancelled a planned friendly between the German national team and the Netherlands.
German police claimed “concrete evidence” of a planned detonation of explosives at the game, and while official details beyond that are scant, there are some reports that the plot was going to involve an ambulance loaded down with explosives being detonated.
The game wasn’t set to start for awhile, but was to be a huge event, with Chancellor Angela Merkel planning to attend. The Paris bombings were similarly carried out at a major event, with French President Francois Hollande in the stadium at the time.
Officials are downplaying the risk of further attacks, though another arena in Hanover, which was to host a concert, was also evacuated. Another high-profile soccer match this evening, France versus Britain in London, is still scheduled to be held as planned, albeit with a massive amount of security and some 5,000 ground troops surrounding the stadium.
Scares like this always follow an attack, so it was probably just a rumour, but it does remind people of how very much we in the EU need each other. The "de facto solidarity" that Robert Schuman spoke of in his famous Declaration of 9 May 1950 is showing through.