'Increased caution is called for'

DW: The popular Carnival parade in Braunschweig was canceled shortly before it was due to start on Sunday. What do you think of the reaction of the Braunschweig police?

Wolfgang Bosbach: Without knowing all the details, I assume that they didn't just receive the usual vague threats, but actual, concrete threats that have to be taken seriously. Otherwise the Carnival parade wouldn't have been canceled. After all, this is an incredibly difficult decision for the authorities.

They were expecting 5,000 participants and roughly 300,000 spectators; a rather large party was supposed to take place in downtown Braunschweig. You need to have a very good reason to cancel such a celebration. Otherwise, authorities would have increased security measures but not canceled the whole thing.

Are police on higher alert after the attacks in Copenhagen?

The current threat in Braunschweig wasn't the first time a large event was threatened, and I fear that there could be copycat offenders, that this one might not have been the last. Security authorities have the very important and difficult task of figuring out how seriously these threats should be taken. And of course our authorities are on alert after the recent events in Paris, Belgium and now in Copenhagen.

On the one hand, we don't want to bow to violence, we don't want to give extremists power over how we live our lives - we want to continue to live our lives in peace and freedom. On the other hand, the highest priority in this situation has to be to fight off danger and to protect lives. That means that there is definitely an increased awareness but - looking at the horrible recent events - not without reason.

How do you explain the fact that, shortly before the cancellation in Braunschweig, Germany's Interior Ministry announced that there was no concrete proof for attacks being planned in Germany?

The security situation hasn't fundamentally changed after the cancellation in Braunschweig. One has to know what information the authorities in Braunschweig had exactly. Who were their sources, and what could be verified in such a short time?

But word is that there were reliable security sources warning of the concrete danger of an attack, of an Islamist threat. Shortly beforehand, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry had said that there was no concrete proof. So does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing when it comes to security?

I can't answer the question of when the state security authorities in Lower Saxony [the German state where Braunschweig is located - ed.] alerted the federal authorities.

There is a change from an abstract to a concrete threat when there are leads concerning who could plan an attack on what place, at what time. Apparently, the leads in Braunschweig increased to an extent that authorities had to deal with a concrete threat to the Carnival parade.

These events take place all over the downtown area with many small streets leading to and away from the parade. These kinds of events are much harder to protect than events in closed rooms, where you can strictly control who gets in.

What does all this mean for the large Rose Monday Carnival parades along the Rhine that attract many more visitors than the one in Braunschweig?

In Cologne alone, we're expecting almost 1 million visitors - that means high alert. The security concept has to be vetted once again, to see if there are any gaps that need to be closed.

But we shouldn't give in to violence and threats. Then the terrorists would have won - the ones who want us to change our lives. That means that increased caution is necessary. Fear or panic is not.

Wolfgang Bosbach, from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, is head of the Bundestag Committee of the Interior