France plans to extend the state of emergency in place since November’s attacks on Paris for a further two months to ensure security at the Euro 2016 football tournament, Prime Minister Manuel Valls s
France plans to extend the state of emergency in place since November’s attacks on Paris for a further two months to ensure security at the Euro 2016 football tournament, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday.
“Faced with an event this big... which must take place in conditions of security and which at the same time should be a celebration... we have to ensure security,” he said on France Info radio.
“The state of emergency cannot be permanent, but on the occasion of these big events... we have decided to prolong it.”
Euro 2016 starts June 10 and runs for a month. Some 2.5 million spectators are expected at 10 stadiums for 51 matches involving 24 teams at the tournament, which France is hosting. There will also be fan zones in other major cities.
The current state of emergency giving extra powers to the police and security forces runs until May 26.
Mr Valls said interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve would propose the measure to other ministers later on Wednesday. It would then need to be voted in by Parliament.
The police has had extra powers to search homes, hold suspects and put people under house arrest since the November 13 attacks, in which 130 people were killed. The initial move was popular in France, but human rights groups have expressed concern at two extensions that have taken place since.
Meanwhile, a Swede who is a suspect in March’s Brussels Metro bombing is now also under suspicion for playing a role in the Paris attacks, Belgian newspaper De Standaard said on Tuesday.
The paper said 23-year-old Osama Krayem’s DNA was found in several of the safe houses that were used by the perpetrators to prepare the Paris attacks.
The newspaper cited no sources for its information. Krayem was charged with murder after his arrest in Brussels last Friday.
