The European Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johansson, warned this Tuesday about the “enormous risk” of possible attacks in the European Union during Christmas due to the polarization in European society due to the war between Israel and Hamas.
“With the war between Israel and Hamas and the polarization it causes in our society with the upcoming Christmas season, there is a huge risk of terrorist attacks in the European Union as we saw recently in Paris,” Johansson said in statements to the press upon his arrival. to the European Interior Council.
This risk of attacks, such as the one that cost the life of a German tourist and injured two more people in the center of Paris, is one of the topics on the agenda of the meeting of Interior Ministers being held in Brussels today, and which will be the last in this format during the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU that ends on December 31.
“Unfortunately, we have also seen it before. So this is an important debate that we will have today in the Council,” the commissioner said.
Johansson also announced that he will announce that “we will now make available an additional 30 million euros for the protection of, for example, Jewish places of worship.”
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office in Paris took over the investigation on Saturday into the attack perpetrated by a 26-year-old Frenchman who stabbed a German tourist to death and injured two people in the center of Paris shouting “Allah is great.”
The attacker was subdued by officers in the Grenelle area, near the Eiffel Tower.
Since 2012, jihadist attacks in France have killed 273 people, adding to the one on Saturday, and injured 1,200, especially in 2015 and 2016.