Germany has a problem with airport security. On Thursday, eight environmental activists from the organisation Last Generation sneaked into four airports – Nuremberg, Cologne-Bonn, Stuttgart and Berlin –, accessed the access roads to the runways and stuck to the asphalt to protest against the use of fossil fuels. Air traffic was temporarily paralysed until they were expelled. “These criminal acts are dangerous and stupid,” reacted the Minister of the Interior, the Social Democrat Nancy Faeser, on social media.
Television images of police pointing at cut and opened metal fences protecting the perimeter have become almost a daily occurrence. Less than a month ago, six other members of the organisation managed to gain entry to Frankfurt Airport, the busiest in the country, at various points. They arrived on foot, by bicycle and on skateboards and used small pliers to get inside and display signs with the slogan “Oil kills”. 140 flights were cancelled. In May the same thing happened in Munich during the Whitsun holiday. Olaf Scholz’s government wants to prevent this by deterring and toughening the law. “We have proposed severe prison sentences,” said Faeser.
The government is already working on a draft amendment to the Air Safety Act so that in future such actions could be punished as criminal offences, which would carry up to two years in prison. They are currently considered administrative offences and carry fines. The new legislation, which will have to be approved by Parliament, will penalise deliberate and unauthorised intrusion into take-off and landing areas if this endangers the safety of civil air traffic. Cutting through an airport fence and blocking a runway, as has happened repeatedly in recent months, would be sufficient grounds for a prison sentence.
The security debate
But beyond trying to dissuade activists with the threat of going to jail, the debate that is emerging these days is that of security. The ease with which protesters access premises considered critical infrastructure is surprising. Even more so when the authorities are on alert for possible sabotage related to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine or the tense situation in the Middle East. How is it possible that these theoretically maximum security places become sieves and dozens of flights end up being cancelled?
The question is pertinent because airports and authorities have had time to prepare. The activists of the Last Generation paralysed a German airport for the first time in 2022. Since then, in addition to their protests, there have been other incredible situations, such as last year when a man drove his car onto the runway area of Hamburg airport and barricaded himself there, taking his daughter hostage.
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Journalist and aviation expert Heinrich Grossbongardt said he was “horrified” by the huge security gaps at German airports in a recent interview with public broadcaster WDR. The danger of such actions is far greater than it might seem when you see young idealists holding anti-oil signs, he said: “They are ultimately harmless troublemakers, but they could have been terrorists.” Grossbongardt, a former spokesman for Boeing in Germany, had already warned months ago about the poor security of airfields when the incident in Hamburg occurred. “Hamburg Airport is not safe, just like other German airports,” he said.
“We are forcing airports to significantly improve the security of their facilities,” Minister Faeser said on her X account. Scholz’s government has been negotiating with the owners of the facilities for months on how to protect them from intrusions such as those of Última Generación. After having tried to sign a declaration of “voluntary commitment” with them – which, according to several media outlets, failed due to the resistance of two large airports – the Executive has opted to force airport operators to improve security measures by means of an order.
The managing director of the German Airports Association (ADV), Ralph Beisel, has publicly defended the current security measures. In his opinion, the concept of “multi-level security” at airports, with fencing systems as one of its components, has proven its worth because air traffic has been immediately interrupted. “The information and alarm chains work reliably,” he said. A few days ago his organisation sent a letter to activists asking them for a meeting and trying to convince them to stop protesting at airports.
“We are in 2024, we know what is happening and we continue as if there were no problems. I have two children and in a few years I will have to explain to them why we continue as if nothing happened despite knowing everything,” says Judith, one of the activists who entered Cologne airport early Thursday morning, in a video published by Última Generación. She is wearing an orange vest and appears to be sitting in the operations area, with several planes in the background. The organization has stressed that it is a “peaceful resistance” and that they have not entered the runways.
The debate over whether prison sentences are proportionate, and especially the question of safety, has overshadowed the message of environmental activists, who are demanding that politicians “a legally binding international agreement to phase out oil, gas and coal worldwide by 2030 to end the mass deaths caused by fueling the climate catastrophe.” Recent polls show that the majority of Germans do not sympathize with these actions, which lead to hundreds of flight cancellations in the middle of the summer holidays.
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