Swiss Army, French police and fighter planes: Austria and Switzerland brace themselves for Euro 2008

Up to 4.5 million football fans are expected to attend the event -- corresponding to more than a quarter of Austria and Switzerland's combined 16 million population.

"We believe the vast majority of fans will be peaceful guests who are looking forward to the football," Austria's interior minister Guenther Platter said last week.

Two Swiss F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets fly over the Stade de Suisse soccer stadium in Bern during a training flight ahead of Euro 2008

"As far as security is concerned we have no indication that we will be confronted with significant problems."

However, Switzerland has just 16,000 full time police officers with 27,000 in Austria, leaving organisers to acknowledge that the security forces will be at full stretch during the three-week tournament.

Additional police officers will be drafted in from France and Germany for the tournament with the armed forces also providing considerable back-up.

In Switzerland, up to 15,000 soldiers will be used, mainly in behind-the-scenes operations, constituting the country's biggest peacetime deployment of army personnel.

Fighter jets carried out practice patrols over Switzerland's four host cities in May as part of preparations to deal with any terrorist attacks.

Despite recent media coverage of vague threats made on pro-extremist Web sites, though, tournament organisers in both countries said there had been no intelligence reports of concrete terrorist plans in relation to Euro 2008.

"The situation is being constantly monitored and analysed however," Swiss public security spokeswoman Anita Panzer said.

"We know that the European Championship can be an attractive target for terrorists or extremists and we are remaining alert."

When it comes to the more likely problem of hooliganism, the organisers said they had learned much from the successful organisation of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Police in Austria and Switzerland have been trained in the so-called '3-D' approach previously adopted at the World Cup, with officers taught to seek 'dialogue' and 'de-escalation' when dealing with boisterous fans.

Only if those two options fail should they resort to 'drastic action'.

A member of Austria's police special unit COBRA demonstrates his skills during a drill in preparation for EURO 2008

By working hard on preventative measures, the organisers hope it will not come to that.

Relying on constant communication with security and intelligence officials from the other participating countries, a four-filter system has been developed to identify and remove known troublemakers.

Checks are first carried out to limit the number of previous offenders obtaining match tickets. Travel bans are also imposed in their home countries.

Heightened security checks at airports and border crossings are then planned to prevent potential hooligans entering Switzerland or Austria.

Finally, police officers and 'spotters' from the participating nations will assist local police in identifying troublemakers who have slipped through the net.

Recent outbreaks of hooliganism within Switzerland's own football league have led to some scepticism over the country's purported readiness for trouble.

Swiss security project leader Martin Jaeggi told reporters in May, however, that organisers expected more peaceful fans at Euro 2008 with international tournaments attracting greater numbers of women and families than domestic league competitions.

He also insisted that the heightened security surrounding Euro 2008 could not be compared to that at Swiss matches.

Those measures have not come cheap, though, with Switzerland earmarking 64.4 million Swiss francs (£31.64 million) of public money for security alone.

Austria does not have a separate tally for Euro 2008 security costs, which will instead be borne within the government's overall spending budget and properly calculated only after the tournament.