Dresden – Since the terrorist attacks in Magdeburg and Berlin, Christmas markets have become high-security zones – the danger for visitors may have decreased, but at the same time the security requirements are causing costs to skyrocket. Now even the first Christmas markets are threatened with closure. Instead of mulled wine, twinkling lights and roasted almonds, it’s now all about concrete blocks, high-tech barriers and million-euro budgets: after the attack in Magdeburg, the authorities have tightened the regulations so drastically that many folk festivals have been cancelled. The reason: the required “certified anti-terror barriers” are driving costs, especially for private organisers, into the stratosphere.
The situation is especially acute in Dresden, which styles itself as Germany’s “Christmas capital.” Alongside the city-run Striezelmarkt, several privately operated fairs are being told by police to scale down, so that access roads can be securely sealed off. Dresden: millions more for safety City councillors had originally set aside €800,000 for enhanced security, but reality has proved far more expensive. “In Dresden alone, the costs now total roughly €4 million,” said organiser Matteo Böhme, 43, who runs the Augustusmarkt.
Matteo Böhme is the spokesperson for the Chamber of Industry and Commerce’s event industry working group and a market operator himself
Böhme, who also serves as spokesperson for the Chamber of Commerce’s events industry task force, has spent months knocking on doors — ministers, bureaucrats, city officials. He even wrote several personal appeals to Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU). The outcome so far? Nothing. In response to a BILD inquiry, the Interior Ministry said only that it was “working with the Association of Cities and Municipalities to find solutions.” A nationwide threat assessment for Christmas markets, it added, would be ready “in early December.”
Authorities leave private organisers in the lurch
The industry calls it a bad joke. “Our markets in Dresden and Pirna open on 25 and 26 November,” says Böhme. “If the police insist on the most expensive high-tech barricades beforehand, but the security assessment only arrives weeks later, that’s simply impossible.” He warns that the result could be “stripped-down markets drained of all atmosphere — or outright cancellations.”
In Dresden, officials are demanding that even privately run Christmas markets install certified anti-terror barriers — like these ones in Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz — yet they’re leaving organisers to bear the costs entirely on their own.
For many private organisers — who have long formed the backbone of Germany’s Christmas markets — survival itself is now at stake. The surge in security costs has made planning impossible. One industry figure warns of nothing less than “the collapse of Christmas market culture.”
(L/A) - machine translated
