EURO 2021

An anti-discrimination football exhibition prepared by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association has been opened in the main hall of the Polish Parliament on 19 February 2014. The opening ceremony was hosted by Deputy Speaker Wanda Nowicka, Poland’s leading campaigner against discrimination and for women’s rights. The exhibition was brought to the Parliament on the initiative of Robert Biedron MP, the founder of Campaign Against Homophobia and a longtime ally of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association. Since autumn 2013, Robert Biedron is the General Rapporteur on LGBT rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of […]

The anti-racism ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association has teamed up with the Football is Beautiful Foundation and numerous other partners for a joint ‘Friends of Football Day’ series of events taking place on 8 June to celebrate the power of football to unite across differences and promote social inclusion. More than 300 football matches, community festivals and other grass-roots events were organized across Poland on the ‘Friends of Football Day’, marking the anniversary of the kick-off of the historic European Football Championships which took place in Poland and Ukraine in 2012. A […]

The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association co-organized the high-profile ‘Poland for All’ event together with the Polish Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Sports and Tourism, the City of Warsaw and the Polish Association of Former Players. It took place at the Warsaw Agrykola stadium on 14 October. The event formed a part of the Football Against Racism in Europe Action Weeks. One of the event’s attractions was a match involving players of Warsaw’s multicultural Ethnoleague and Polish football stars, including legends such as the former internationals Dariusz Dziekanowski, Radoslaw Majdan and Roman […]

With the Polish venues on track in their preparations for co-hosting Euro 2012, the lingering concern for the country’s football fans is whether they will have a national team capable of putting up a respectable performance. Coach Franciszek Smuda has seen his side fall as far as 73rd in FIFA’s admittedly farcical ranking system, with the dearth of playing talent a regular topic for the country’s footballing media. Many wonder what happened to the squad that won the European Under-18 Championship in Finland in 2001. That team included Tomasz Kuszczak, […]

On 18 August 2011, at the invitation of the Polish Parliament’s National and Ethnic Minorities Committee, the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association presented its activities against racism and xenophobia in football stadiums in the lead up to EURO 2012. – ‘Polish football is often quite multi-cultural, which is emblematic of broader demographic changes across Europe, but the situation in many stadiums still gives reasons for concern’ – said Dr Rafal Pankowski, the coordinator of the East Europe Monitoring Centre set up by ‘NEVER AGAIN’ in cooperation with the FARE Network and UEFA. […]

The National Stadium will be officially opened on 27 August. On that day, there will be an artistic event called “Energia pokoleń” (Energy of Generations). Artistic show for the opening of the National Stadium The names of the invited artists and the scenario are still secret. In the official announcement on the NCS website it is stated that “the opening ceremony, the scenario of which was selected by means of a nationwide contest, will be an unique event, full of surprising special effects, amazing choreography and music”. The organizer of […]

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’ […]

“Poland and Ukraine”. With these words said two years ago, Michel Platini, the head of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Executive Committee announced the host of football finals of European Championship in 2012. What is the state of stadiums’ preparation? You will find the answer in following report. With every month bringing us closer to the Euro 2012 Championships, which will take place on the Polish and Ukrainian football fields the number of skeptics and malcontents (as media often refer to as euro-sceptics) is decreasing. The assurance of […]

Not everyone liked the UEFA’s decision of leaving the organization of the European football championships in 2012 for Poland and Ukraine. The Germans had the most grudges, but this shouldn’t came as a surprise to anybody as it’s widely known that our western neighbors wanted to take over the event most. According to the daily “Die Welt”, UEFA president Michel Platini gave Poland and Ukraine “a yellow card and a warning” but he is endangered himself by “a red card” and the European Championships are endangered by a fiasco.

Hard times came to Polish football. The UEFA, that once again threatened Poland to take away the organization of Euro 2012, is fed up with the fights between the Minister of Sport and the Polish Soccer Association. FIFA lost patience as well, warning about the possibility of excluding Poland from the World Championship eliminations. The UEFA communication director, William Gaillard says: ‘In the document certifying the organization of Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine there is a clause stating that both football federations have good relations with its governments. In […]