The Ukrainian war between the president, prime minister and parliament and Euro 2012 in the background is gaining in strength.
Viktor Yushchenko has once again refused to sign the law on the preparations for the tournament, and thus he blocked the payment of the money. Local authorities throw down their arms and state that without government support there will not be a cup-final in Kiev.
The Government of Ukraine, which bears the results of the economic crisis is seeking money wherever to save the Euro 2012. There are not so many opportunities. One of the most serious opportunity was to be a national bank, or rather its financial reserves. Of these, the Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko wanted to “snatch” almost 10 billion hryvnia in order that the biggest sport event in this country not resulted in a failure but without success.
Gianni Infantino, Secretary General of the UEFA has warned that Ukraine can lose the right to co-organize championships in 2012 with Poland.
- At present, nothing can be ruled out but Ukraine knows what has to be done to not to make such situation happen – said Infantino in Florence during discussions of the organization of European champions leagues.
He added that he is concerned with delays in the infrastructure. He reminded that until the end of November, the Ukrainians have time to convince UEFA that they are able to organize the championships.
The final decision on Euro 2012 will be made in 9-11 December at a meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee. It is known that there is no risk when it comes to the organization of the tournament in four Polish cities – Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk. (read more…)
Polish Minister of Sports and Tourism Mirosław Drzewiecki and Andrzej Bogucki, Board Member of PL 2012 have met with a visiting trade mission from Saudi Arabia.
The visit of potential investors is the result of Minster Drzewiecki’s, Treasury Minister’s Aleksander Grad’s and Prime Minister’s Donald Tusk’s visit to Saudi Arabia last March.
The main subject of the talks were possible investments ahead of the UEFA EURO 2012 Football Championship which will begin in Poland and Ukraine in 1045 days.
Andrzej Bogucki of PL 2012, the coordinator of preparatory undertakings for Euro 2012 in Poland, outlined the financing framework for the Championship. ‘A sum of PLN 1 billion is earmarked by the Polish government for airports, PLN 121 billion for accelerating the preparations and PLN 126 billion for road construction. EUR 67 billion comes from the EU. The National Stadium in Warsaw is 100% funded from Poland’s central budget but private contributions are still needed, also in other host-cities’ Bogucki said. ‘The sectors reserved for private investors are: hotel and team base camps construction, telecom and IT. The Master Plan naming all the constructions is available on the PL 2012 website’ he added.
Poles are running ahead of schedule with their preparations.
Poland is ahead of schedule in its preparations for the 2012 European Soccer Championship. The UEFA commission recently visited Poland and Ukraine to assess the situation and approved the progress made in the Polish cities of Warsaw, Poznan, Gdansk, and Wroclaw, which will host the soccer games. Poland hopes that Ukraine will keep to its schedule and will clear the backlog, otherwise it will be denied the right to host the soccer championship.
Our Euro-2012 host cities are Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv, and Kharkiv. However, if one compares the situation in Kharkiv and Poznan, one pair of the Euro-2012 partner host cities, in terms of renovation and construction of stadiums, maintenance of highways, the availability of European-standard hotels, etc., the picture here is lamentable. Masej Malewicz, a Poznan official and a Euro-2012 organization committee member, proudly displays a business card that says “Poznan. It’s worth living here.”
After a stuttering start, Poland has, unlike Ukraine, finally gained the confidence of UEFA, the governing body of European football, which recently confirmed that four Polish cities will host matches during the Euro 2012 football championships.
Following early delays, Poland is likely to have acceptable stadiums in six cities, and the airport and hotel infrastructure looks to be in good shape as well. The problem, as ever in Poland, is with building a modern system of highways and expressways that would allow fans to move easily from venue to venue.
When UEFA took the unusual and risky step of awarding the championships to Poland and Ukraine two years ago, the right-wing government of the time promised to build 3,000 km of highways and less expensive and slightly slower expressways by 2012. The man in the hot seat now is infrastructure minister Cezary Grabarczyk, who is coming under increasingly intense pressure from Donald Tusk, the prime minister, to ensure that the road programme is not a disaster. Grabarczyk has already toned down his predecessor’s promises, admitting that 2,000 km is more realistic, but even getting that amount completed by 2012 would break Poland’s longstanding inability to build roads speedily.
Global financial crisis may make the job of preparing for the Euro 2012 football championship easier for Poland as demand for unrelated construction eases and prices drop, a senior official said on Friday.
Marcin Herra, who heads the PL.2012 agency preparing for the event, told Reuters in an interview, the global slowdown in investment increased developers’ interest in key infrastructure projects, while falling prices of building materials should make the final price-tag lower.
Infrastructure work is a major challenge for Poland and co-host Ukraine, which have to build not only stadiums to host the tournament but also roads, airports, railways and hotels.
“The crisis and the slowdown will have many consequences for the preparations… There are no more problems with finding employees… This will allow us to make much more rational deals than we previously expected,” Herra said.
UEFA President Michel Platini has urged the international community on Thursday to help Poland and Ukraine in their preparations for the Euro 2012.
Poland and Ukraine need support of international community – quotes the National News Agency of Ukraine “Ukrinform”. In the last few months German and Italian media speculated about taking the preparation of EURO 2012 away from Poland and Ukraine.
According to western press former communist countries will not manage such a huge project. Italians, who lost the battle to organize this event, were first to criticize.
Platini, who is in Italy, definitely denied that UEFA is going to switch Euro 2012 finals to Italian federation. I suppose that Italy will run for Euro 2016-said the UEFA president-but the Italian stadiums are not the best in Europe. Most of them are old and not too pretty- he added.
The government has initially agreed, that the segment of highway A2, which is nearly 106 km long, from Nowy Tomyśl to Świecko (border with Germany), will be built with concrete.
– Such building will be more expensive, but then the exploitation of such highway will cost less – said Zofia Kwiatkowska, the spokesperson of Autostrada Wielkopolska. The road-building with concrete for Euro 2012 costs 22 billion zlotys more than with asphalt, whereas the preservation of concrete road is 15% cheaper. In conclusion it is worth paying more on road-building.
Experiences of other countries show, that the organization of the Championships, most of all, gives benefits for companies which take part in tourist traffic service, improves an image of given country, and also causes great development of infrastructure.
According to preliminary approximations, about half a million foreign supporters should arrive in Poland during Euro 2012. Dynamic development of the hotel base will be necessary to accommodate all guests. Experts predict, that it should be improved by building new 30 000 hotel places. In Warsaw, Gdańsk, Poznań and Wrocław, (so-called basic cities), and in reserve cities – Chorzów and Kraków, many decisions are being made and their aim is an extension of hotel base with missing places.
According to data published by Main Statistic Department (in Polish – Główny Urząd Statystyczny) the hotel infrastructure in Poland in last months of 2007 consisted of 1 370 objects. 108 of them were in categorization process. During 2007 75 new hotel objects have been built in Poland. Most of all new hotels have been built in voivodships: Dolnośląskie (15), Małopolskie (22), Pomorskie (10) and currently the number of them in all these voivodships is 820 which is 60% of all hotel objects in Poland.
In the next week will be presented a report on the centres of residence for the teams involved in European football championship in 2012 poland – announced the president overseeing the preparation of the company PL.2012 Marcin Herra.
Team composed of representatives of the Polish Football Association, the Ministry of Sport and Tourism and PL.2012 made a very precise evaluation of 110 centres residence located throughout the country. For six weeks have been visited and checked every place, and then bear the additional documentation photo that was seen progress in a given time – said Herra.
In Poland, will be more than 16 bases residence for representation, which will be ready for mid 2010. We should not confine itself only to such numbers, because then we will exclude many objects, which could be on the list of Euro – he added.
