A truck with a delivery of groceries has already turned around on Pacellistrasse, while the driver of another vehicle is trying stubbornly to get through the police cordon and to his destination in the inner city. He debates with the officials, waves papers, repeatedly opens the loading area on which the pallets are stacked. No chance. Since Friday morning at 10 a.m., the Promenadeplatz has been cordoned off and the entrance largely sealed; until Sunday afternoon only specially marked vehicles can get through and in front of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the 59th Munich Security Conference, the Siko, is taking place this weekend.
The Munich police are on duty with up to 4,500 men and women, reported their spokesman Andreas Franken on Friday morning, plus around 300 federal police officers: “We ensure the security of the security conference and that the meetings registered in this regard go smoothly.” The police officers are primarily keeping an eye on the 16 hotels in which the 45 expected heads of state and government, including their entourage and other conference participants, are staying; but also the more than 20 demonstrations that take place in the context of Siko, most and the largest of them on Saturday afternoon.
In view of the expected traffic obstructions on the streets of Munich, Franken advises all citizens to use public transport to get to the city center. However, not necessarily the tram lines 19, 21 and N19. Their operation via Promenadeplatz is suspended until Sunday at around 4.30 p.m. – newly arriving vehicles such as food trucks are checked on the tramway lanes so that the lanes remain free for the car columns with the Siko guests.
If you want to go into the streets around the conference venue that have been declared a security area, you need a special accreditation; the streets are Kardinal-Faulhaber-, Karmeliter-, Hartmann- and Prannerstrasse as well as parts of Pacellistrasse and Maffeistrasse. Corridors have been set up for residents and customers of the shops located there, which can also be entered without accreditation. However, bag checks are to be expected. Despite the 1,000 no-parking signs that had been put up, around 100 cars had already been towed away by Friday morning.
“It’s not the first Siko that the Munich police are in charge of,” says Andreas Franken, “but each one is special, and this year it’s all about the Ukraine war.” Because of the global political situation, the Munich police have sharpened their security concept for the event in the Bayerischer Hof. For example, explosive detection dogs are also used. During an exercise on Friday morning, the shepherd dog Bosko sniffed out a bit of PETN, military explosives, in the wheel housing of a vehicle that an official had previously deposited there. Police spokesman Franken said there were no concrete findings about planned disruptive actions, but the abstract risk situation was “a scenario that we have to take into account”.
One of the new challenges for the security forces this year is what happens at the gathering. The traditional rallies and protests of an anti-Siko alliance went off without any problems in the past, Franken summed up, but now other and very different camps are joining in: demonstrations for and against arms deliveries to Ukraine.