Euro 2012 - Ukraine and Poland

The government is considering issuing private firms with licences to build railway lines with the aim of speeding up infrastructure investments. According to the Transport Ministry, private enterprises would be allowed to charge trains tolls for access to the routes they have built for a dozen or so years, after which the track would be transferred to state control.
Another possible option would be to introduce ?fast-track investments? into a draft amendment to the Railway Transport and Environmental Protection Act. According to the Ministry?s own estimates, this would help shorten the time needed to prepare new investments from six and a half years to four and a half years. The amendment would primarily make it easier to expropriate real estate for railway investments.
The Ministry of Transport and Regional Development is currently determining how much cash PKP will be able to spend on key investments prior to Euro 2012. PKP has been granted an EU subsidy of approx. ?6bn within the framework of the government?s ?Infrastructure and Environment? operational programme. If the Ministry of Finance agrees to increase the fuel excise revenue quota allocated to transport purposes from 12% to 50%, this would boost annual expenditure on infrastructure by roughly PLN 6.6bn (?1.75bn).
Moreover, PKP Polish Railways may be entitled to at least PLN 380m (?100.8m) from the state budget in 2008 to finance renovation and maintenance work. It received the same amount this year, but the Ministry of Transport hopes to secure even more cash in 2008, as it wants to shorten the time spent renovating track between cities hosting Euro 2012 games by at least two years.

polishmarket.com

The relevant agreement has been signed by Economy Minister Anatoliy Kinakh and President of the Confederation of Polish Employers Andrzei Malinowski.

According to Anatoliy Kinakh, the collation aims at support of the relevant activity of the government ahead of the Euro-2012. Within the framework of gearing up to the event a conference on gearing up to the Euro-2012 will be held in Warsaw on July 26 to 27 with participation of pols and entrepreneurs. Anatoliy Kinakh also agreed with the polish party to hold a business forum in Kyiv in fall with participation of European businessmen.

nrcu.gov.ua

An agreement setting up a coalition of Polish and Ukrainian employers for Euro 2012 football 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.

“We want to help the government and Members of the Parliament in preparing most favorable solutions for the staging of the championships,” said Malinowski. He appealed to the government for the acceleration of work on necessary laws, including a law on public-private partnership.

Poland’s Economy Minister Piotr Wozniak present at the conference said that private capital would be needed to prepare Euro 2012 smoothly. He announced that the government work on public and private partnership was nearing completion.

On April 18, Poland and Ukraine were chosen to co-host the European Championship in 2012. They will co-host the football tournament for the first time in history.

Source: Xinhua

This weekend, the Football Federations of Ukraine and Poland have signed in Lviv a cooperation agreement in frames of Euro 2012 preparations.They launched their first joint project ?Radio Summer: Approaching Euro 2012? on Sunday, Deutsche Welle reports.

On Saturday, the two football federation high officials had a joint business lunch which preceded signing of a coordination agreement, particularly touching upon Euro 2012 preparation related information exchange.

Commenting on this, Vice President of the Football Federation of Ukraine Serhiy Storozhenko said, ?It is high time we got down to earth after the Cardiff euphoria. We have to proceed to a stage of tangible results in order to be able to present them to UEFA auditors in 2010.?

Ukrainian and Polish representatives stressed that the championship hosting was a brilliant chance for both states to enhance their European image.

A concert promo tour as the first joint event will see those Ukrainian and Polish cities which are to host Euro 2012 matches.

Polish rock-band Perfect and Ukrainian singer Ruslana are to participate in the event, Welle reports.

Source: Ukrayinska Pravda

The National Sport Complex “Olympic” will have a modern entity ahead of the Euro-2012, Family, Youth and Sport Minister Viktor Korzh said.

This will be sport, business and entertainment trade center, Dmytro Tabachnyk said. The minister also stressed that a concept of reconstruction of the “Olympic” will be granted within 10 days. Viktor Korzh also stressed that the “Olympic” is a real benefit of Kyiv. We realize that people’s spend their free time not only playing football, therefore, we intend to construct a pool and fitness center there, Viktor Korzh said. Ukraine has been granted a right to host the Euro-2012.

It is less than three months since Poland and Ukraine were awarded the right to stage the UEFA EURO 2012? final round - but with five years left to put on eastern Europe’s biggest ever football event the preparations are well and truly underway. Polish Football Federation (PZPN) president Micha? Listkiewicz worked alongside his Ukrainian counterpart Grigoriy Surkis on the winning bid, and he spoke to uefa.com about his feelings at the moments of victory and their roadmap to the big kick-off.

uefa.com: It is now some weeks since the decision was made in Cardiff - has the good news sunk in?

Micha? Listkiewicz: It was a fantastic decision and a fantastic time for Poland and our friends from Ukraine. But the clock is running and our prime minister decided to establish a special body consisting of top ministers and people from the PZPN, the minister of sport. And there is a lot of work today, this year we are taking all legal steps necessary to help investors to build quickly and avoid problems in building stadiums and infrastructure.

uefa.com: What were you feelings at the moment of victory?

Listkiewicz: It was a great surprise, I was jumping. I behaved like a small boy. But I am not ashamed as it was the greatest moment of my life in football. Of course it was the same for our friends in Ukraine. In Poland, thousands of people gathered at the squares and celebrated like after the Polish victory in 1974 in the third-place match in the [FIFA] World Cup.

uefa.com: Were you confident you would win?

Listkiewicz: Of course we believed, but personally I expected we would win on the second ballot but my friend Grigoriy Surkis from Ukraine said: ?No no, we will win on the first ballot.? So he was right! Of course we knew the other bidders, especially Italy, had more experience, bidding for the second or third time but for Ukraine/Poland it was the first time ever so our success is even bigger as we were beginners.

uefa.com: What were the reasons for your success?

Listkiewicz: All three bids were very strong, the presentations were very professional and all three candidates were very well prepared. I think our advantage was the philosophy - to give a chance to eastern Europe. It happened with the [UEFA] Champions League final which will be played next year in Moscow, and the next EURO after 2008 will be in eastern Europe, I think it is the philosophy of UEFA to give a chance to new countries. But of course we were very well prepared. And the size of our countries is important, 90 million people waiting for a big sporting event for the first time in our history.

uefa.com: But does the size of your countries also present a challenge with the distances between venues?

Listkiewicz: It is a big challenge, but a big chance for both countries. Not just in football, not just in sport but in general. To build new roads, new railway stations, to increase the size of the airports - the whole infrastructure, which will stay forever. EURO 2012? will be a fantastic event but one day it will finish. But all the infrastructure will remain for the people. Regarding the distances I don?t think it will be a problem, we had the same with Korea/Japan 2002 and no one complained, everybody was happy.

uefa.com: Will it also prove a boost for tourism in your countries?

Listkiewicz: We hope the one million people who will come for EURO will recognise both countries as fantastic places for tourism in the future. They will advise their friends and families to come again, Poland is a beautiful country. People in Europe do not know we have fantastic forests, lakes, mountains and beaches but they will recognise that and hopefully come again;

uefa.com: Of course, you will be working very closely with your colleagues from Ukraine?

Listkiewicz: We meet very often. We are continuing with a children’s tournament, Generation 2012, for boys aged 12 to 14. All the EURO host citites participate. We have already organised it twice, once in Ukraine and once in Poland, now we will do it again in Poland. Many hundreds of boys play, a lot of parents and a lot of friends come and we hope some of these young boys will one day play professional football, maybe even EURO 2012?.?

uefa.com: Have you been getting advice from other host nations, for example Austria and Switzerland who stage UEFA EURO 2008?.

Listkiewicz: I have spoken already to my friends [Swiss Football Association president] Ralph M. Zloczower and [Austrian Football Association president] Friedrich Strickler, they are ready to give us all their know-how and advice. We have had meetings with the [German Football Association] about the German World Cup preparations and we will go to Portugal [UEFA EURO 2004? hosts] to learn. Because we will learn a lot, we have never organised such a big event.

©uefa.com 1998-2007. All rights reserved.

WARSAW, July 11 (Reuters) - Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski will appoint a close aide to his twin brother President Lech Kaczynski as sports minister, a government source said on Wednesday.

The source said chief of the presidential cabinet Elzbieta Jakubiak would replace Tomasz Lipiec, whom the prime minister dismissed this week for being implicated in a corruption investigation.

“The ministry will also gain additional responsibilities with issues related to the Euro 2012 tournament,” the government source told Reuters.

The additional responsibilities will include tourism and developing information infrastructure for the football tournament.

Poland and Ukraine will co-host Euro 2012 and both have their hands full because they need to upgrade transport links and build hotels, as well as construct nearly all the stadiums from scratch.

Source:Guardian Unlimited

It?s a good thing that Tuesday?s ?Super Kubok? match between Dynamo Kyiv and Donetsk Shakhtar was held in Odessa and not in the capital city?s Olympic Stadium. Officials from the Union of European Football Associations were on hand to watch the match in the port city, whose stadium is currently listed as a stand-by venue for the Euro 2012 championship finals. Had the match been held in Kyiv, everyone would have seen the eyesore that is the unfinished Troyitsky commercial and entertainment complex in front of Olympic Stadium. Both UEFA and the FIFA world football federation have said that they may prohibit international football matches from being held at the stadium because the planned complex poses a security risk to the speedy evacuation of fans from the stadium in the event of an emergency.

Nevertheless, the company that began building the trade center said that it will go ahead with plans to complete construction, which was suspended a year ago. The company claims that it has all necessary permits and three independent evaluations dismissing the evacuation risks ? including one from a firm that conducted similar evaluations in France when the World Cup was held in that country in 1988.

But international football insiders say that the problems with the Olympic Stadium go beyond the planned shopping mall and that major work to the building is required before the stadium is prepared to handle the onslaught of fans for the final match of Euro 2012. One solution that has been bandied about is the construction of a new stadium on the location of Kyiv?s outskirts. Cynics claim that the plan for a new stadium is being lobbied by those looking to tear down the old one and build high-priced housing on its location.

Surely it will be less expensive to improve the stadium already in place and relocate the half-constructed shopping mall to another location. It would be a shame to deprive Kyivans of the historic venue in the city?s center. A business center, apartment buildings or individual business interests should be secondary to state interests and national pride. Otherwise, Ukraine risks drawing a red card from European football authorities and losing the right to host the final match for the Euro 2012 championships.

A concept of state program on gearing up and holding the Euro-2012 was approved at a July 11 sitting of the Cabinet of ministers, Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk told a July 11 news briefing.

According to Dmytro Tabachnyk, a state program on gearing up and holding the Euro-2012 will be drafted within two months. The Economy Ministry and Family, Youth and Sports Ministry pose as orderers of the program. As it was noted by Dmytro Tabachnyk, Ukraine has already contributed into holding the Euro-2012. Ukraine is ahead of Poland in gearing up to the event, he said. Within the framework of the event, regional and local organizing committees with be formed. A separate institution and departments within the Kyiv Regional Administration, Lviv Regional Administration, Donetsk Regional Administration, Odesa Regional Administration and Kharkiv Regional Administration will be established to control gearing up to the event. According to Dmytro Tabachyk, the government has commissioned the Kyiv City Administration to note recommendations on choosing the land for construction of a new stadium. The government has also commissioned to sort out irregularities on designing works near the Olympic stadium.

Source:NRCU

Independent Polish tourism group Warsaw Destination Alliance (WDA), which aims to promote the country’s capital city, will establish a body to look at government preparations for the European football tournament in 2012, to be hosted jointly by Poland and Ukraine, WDA President Alex Kloszewski said Tuesday.

“We intend to establish an experts committee to [assess] the [government] organizing committee,” Kloszewski said during a meeting with construction industry representatives. “The two bodies could start to cooperate after the summer time.”

After enthusiasm in the wake of the European football authority UEFA’s decision to grant the EURO 2012 organization to a joint bid of Poland and Ukraine, Polish construction companies raised complains about legal procedures and difficulties with kick-starting public-private partnership (PPP) - seen as vital to fulfilling stadia and infrastructure commitments.

As a result of the Tuesday debate, WDA drafted a list of bullet points it identified as vital for readying the country’s infrastructure for the Euro 2012 championship.

Construction industry representatives primarily pointed toward unfavorable and burdensome regulations regarding PPP projects, environment protection and public procurements.

Representatives also said a lack of national transport infrastructure development program poses a danger of process paralysis.

Other figures meanwhile said the general outlook for entrepreneurship in Poland was poor.

“I think that we should start to lobby for business persons being seen as partners to the public sector,” said Wojciech Warski, chief executive officer for IT firm Softex Data. “There is a very bad climate over entrepreneurship.”

Internet edition of Interfax Central Europe