EURO 2021

During the next year’s European Football Championships in Poland and Ukraine there will be a total ban on smoking in all stadiums. It will not be allowed to sell or promote tobacco in the stadiums and their surroundings – announced UEFA on Thursday. It is the joint action of UEFA, the World Health Organization, the World Heart Organization, the European Network of Healthy Stadium, Organising Committees in Poland and Ukraine as well as local health support groups. Euro 2012 free from tobacco – this slogan makes us think about the […]

A new report from a Warsaw based anti-racism group documents the number of racist and discriminatory incidents in the host countries for the 2012 European Championships. The report called ‘Hateful’ has been produced by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association in cooperation with Football Against Prejudices (Ukraine), as part of the FARE network Eastern European Monitoring Centre. It covers an 18 month period from September 2009 to March 2011, detailing 195 individual incidents involving football in Poland and Ukraine. The authors describe the numbers of incidents reported as ‘giving cause for concern’ […]

The anti-racist East Europe Monitoring Centre starts its operation in Warsaw this month. The newly launched centre is going to monitor, research and document cases of racism and xenophobia across the region, with a special emphasis on Poland and Ukraine. ‘The growing social significance of football in Poland and Ukraine before 2012 provides an excellent opportunity to highlight the pressing issues of xenophobia and racism in Eastern Europe’ – said sociologist Dr Rafal Pankowski, the Monitoring Centre coordinator. ‘Our starting point is racism in football, but we see it in […]