An agreement setting up a coalition of Polish and Ukrainian employers for Euro 2012 soccer Championship was signed here Monday by head of the Confederation of Polish Employers Andrzej Malinowski and Ukrainian Economy Minister and head of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Businessmen Anatoly Kinakh, Polish PAP news agency reported.
The coalition will support projects related to infrastructure and transport, sports infrastructure, development of accommodation and catering and the two countries world-wide promotion.
Breaking with its tradition of strongly advocating Poland’s adoption of the euro, Poland’s central bank under its new governor is to play a more neutral role.
Slawomir Skrzypek, governor for just over six months, is creating an office to study the costs and advantages of joining the eurozone. Poland’s finance ministry says Poland will meet the Maastricht criteria for joining by 2009 and according to Mr Skrzypek the earliest possible date for Poland adopting the euro is 2012 or 2013.
Kiev (ANTARA News) - The rights to broadcast the Euro 2012 football championships are going to be sold for one billion euros, Adam Olkowicz, head of the Polish committee for organizing the championships, said Saturday in Yalta.
“Only the TV broadcasting rights to Euro 2012 will be sold for one billion euros, which will be a record. Big earnings are expected for UEFA. The countries organizing the championships will also get a big economic gain,” he said during the round table ‘Euro 2012: what it will bring to Ukraine’. (more…)
It has only taken a couple of months since the surprise Euro 2012 hosting decision for one of the co-hosts to suffer a major embarrassment.
The fact that the rioting took place during the Inter-Toto Cup – a truly pointless and largely ignored competition – is perhaps some small consolation for European football administrators. (more…)
Poland is training women to work on building sites because so many men have left to work in Britain.
As the Polish economy grows and especially now that the country has landed the Euro 2012, there is a huge shortage of construction workers.
Employment authorities on Poland have said so many male builders have gone to the UK that there is simply not enough, but that training up some of the many unemployed women to do the work was a logical move. (more…)
Ukraine and Poland would set up a coordination council for 2012 Euro football tournament, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has said.
Yushchenko held a meeting with his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski in Ukraine Monday to discuss the issues pertaining to the organization of Euro 2012.
I uploaded this video to Youtube as I consider this very important for our country. If we do not get ready for European Union and for Euro 2012, nobody will welcome us there. Look at this unnatural cruelty. Is this fair for the young girl.
I publish this under Proud to Be Ukrainian, but it should be Shame for Being Ukrainian under this context.
What is unique in our country. I think human relationships here are great. People are caring and hospitable. We have to pay much attention to preserving this spirit, or we are banned.
Look at this video and feel free to comment. I would be glad to hear your thoughts.
The gadgets sold with the logo of Poland-Ukraine Bid are illegal. The Internet domain names including references to EURO 2012 that are registered on mass scale may prove to be worthless.
In their bid Poland and Ukraine committed themselves to support UEFA in enforcement of its industrial property rights covering the rights to the logo of Poland and Ukraine bid and logo of the future Championships. Authorities of both countries are to help the organizers in combating the so-called ambush marketing, i.e. practices consisting in marketing of goods and services based on associations with the European Championships. UEFA pays particular attention to such practices and therefore e2012.org publishes the following statement of UEFA on that matter:
Warsaw (dpa) - Poland’s Ministry of Transport Thursday said roadworks ahead of the Euro 2012 football play-offs were on target, denying claims to the contrary made by road construction experts.
On Monday, Polish experts insisted the country was nearly 13 billion dollars short of the 47 billion dollars it needed to make the country’s derelict road network ready for an influx of football fans for the Euro 2012 playoffs.
Poland and Ukraine today won the bid to host the UEFA EURO 2012 Soccer Championship. The decision by the UEFA Executive Committee came as a most welcome surprise for two nations currently mared by political crisis. Beating the odds against favourite contender Italy, UEFA in a seminal decision opted for development instead of profit. By this brave and strategic decision, UEFA clearly showed that soccer is a concern for all or Europe, and not merely a concern of mighty nations of the EU.
Sport is politics. This has been evident ever since the 1933 Berlin Olympics. Who gets to host a major international sports’ event has enormous profits to gain economically and in terms of goodwill. However, it is also a big gamble, as the opposite is equally true if organisers fail to successfully go trough with the event. Then, it involves great losses in both profit and prestige for the states concerned.
Faced by such considerations, the UEFA Executive Committee still decided for the Poland-Ukraine joint candidacy. The main contender and favourite was Italy, which already has the necessary infrastructure in terms of arenas, airports, roads, etc. However, what in the end seems to have turned the tide against Italy, are the recent bribery scandals and hooligan riots that so has tarred the image of Italian soccer internationally. This was not the case with with Poland and Ukraine, but this positive image may also prove an unwelcome blessing for Warzaw and Kiev.
But wait a minute…have UEFA been smoking too many Jamaican cigarettes, or something?We watched with baited breath as UEFA president, Michele Platini (above), stood on stage in Cardiff, Wales, and slowly tore open the envelope. It was between Croatia/Hungary, Italy and Poland/Ukraine. Everyone expected Italy.
Half of me didn’t want Poland to win, as I knew I would have to throw together something about the story in about half an hour. The other half of me - the footballing half (the bits with legs and feet) - wanted Poland to win.
And then the ex-French mid-fielder pulled out the card with the names of the winning bid on it, and the footballing half took over. I emitted that noise men make when a goal is scored:
Yeeeaahhhhaaaarrrgggggggg…gurgle….
The same noise slowly echoed through all the offices next to mine and floated, like a Mexican wave, down the corridor.
Then my brain kicked in again, along with the rest of Poland’s. Have the guys in the European football governing body gone out of their tiny minds?
There are a few small problems with Poland and Ukraine being given such a huge sporting event to put on. Here are a just a few of them.
Poland has no…um…decent football stadiums.
Poland’s football governing body was suspended by the government earlier this year because it was not doing enough kicking ou (more…)
More medium-class hotels will be built in Poland in preparation for the 2012 European Soccer Championships.
Jozef Ratajski from the Polish Tourist Chamber said that the country lacked a sufficient network of rationally priced two and three-star hotels.
Andrzej Saja from the Polish Hoteliers’ Economic Chamber pointed out that medium hotel construction would probably be a rising market in coming years.
The Championship will certainly be a promotional impulse for Poland, Saja remarked.
At the moment there are over 1,320 hotels in Poland.
Poland and Ukraine were chosen to co-host the European Championship soccer tournament in 2012. They will co-host the soccer tournament for the first time in history.
WARSAW, June 15 (Xinhua) — Poland’s national bank chief Slawomir Skrzypek said on Friday that the country would not join the euro zone before 2012.
Skrzypek said Poland is only expected to meet fiscal deficit levels required in the Masstricht Treaty in 2009, and will then enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II) which was designed to ensure that would-be euro zone members can orient their currency policies toward stability, and lasts two years.
“Therefore, the country could join the euro zone in 2012 at the earliest,” Skrzypek said, adding that Poland would only join it when circumstances are most favorable.
At a seminar held earlier in the day to discuss the euro’s influence on Poland’s future, Skrzypek said the government had assigned a group of experts to study issues related to the euro zone entry. The group will issue a report on their findings by the end of 2008.
A newcomer in the European Union, Poland has been hesitant on whether to join the euro zone. Warsaw worries that the entry could slow down economic growth and has thereby taken a wait-and-see attitude towards the issue.
President Lech Kaczynski once said in 2006 that Poland would hold a referendum in 2010 on whether to join the euro zone.
Poland is considering enlisting as many as 20,000 prisoners to help build the stadiums, roads and hotels that it desperately needs to co-host the Euro 2012 soccer tournament.
Pawel Nasilowski, deputy chief of Poland’s prisons, was quoted by the PAP news agency yesterday as saying that use of the inmates was being considered as part of an EU program to rehabilitate prisoners.
Poland is grappling with a shortage of manual labour, particularly of construction workers, amid a booming economy and the departure of hundreds of thousands of Poles to better-paying jobs in Ireland, Britain, and elsewhere in Western Europe.
Nasilowski that the convicts would leave their prisons only in supervised convoys, and stressed that it would also give them a chance at rehabilitation.
He recalled the words of the late Polish-born Pope John Paul II, saying “you are sentenced, but you are not condemned.”
Poland and neighbouring Ukraine won their bid to co-host the sporting event in 2012, but are still struggling with a shortage and crumbling condition of roads and stadiums, a legacy of the communist era.
It is reported that Apple considers taking legal steps against Polish Football Association for alleged copyright infringment. Apple asserts that a presentation used by Polish - Ukraine Euro 2012 team at Cardiff to present the joint offer of these two countreis infringes a copyrighted iPod commercial. There is no doubt that the clips below are similar and the author of “football” one was inspired by iPod ad. As to the infringment .. please judge by yourself. In my opinion it’s just the inspiration, following the general idea , therefore it can’t be considered as copyright infringment.
Generally, Apple has many ‘copyright’ troubles with Poles recently - please read the story
of Tomasz Rychlicki who published at his blog the alternative set of iPhone icons.
Poland and Ukraine today won the bid to host the UEFA EURO 2012 Soccer Championship. The decision by the UEFA Executive Committee came as a most welcome surprise for two nations currently mared by political crisis. Beating the odds against favourite contender Italy, 
Executive Committee still decided for the 