Ukraine is struggling to finish important infrastructure upgrades before the looming Nov. 30 deadline to prove it is ready to co-host the Euro 2012 football championship.
Economic recession has put the brakes on construction across the country. But at one site in downtown Kyiv, workers are hammering away from dawn to dusk.
The work to get the Olympic Stadium ready for the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, which Ukraine is set to co-host with Poland, is going full steam ahead as the country tries to prove it is ready for the second biggest tournament in the sport, after the World Cup.
With the clock ticking down fast to the Nov. 30 cutoff set by the Union of European Football Associations, concerns abound that infrastructure shortcomings could smash the country’s hopes of hosting as an equal partner with Poland.As a UEFA delegation visited Ukraine this week to check on progress and meet with officials, Ukrainian organizers stressed that there was no “plan B,” and that the country would pull through and meet UEFA standards.
Major financing problems thrown up by the crisis could also be partially resolved on Aug. 21, if an extraordinary session of parliament overturns the president’s veto and releases almost Hr 10 billion in funding for preparations.But even if the money is allocated, there remains a daunting amount of work ahead to complete stadiums and construct airports and hotels.It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When Ukraine won the right in 2007 to co-host Euro 2012, it was hailed as an opportunity for the country to demonstrate its readiness to move closer to the European Union.“It was the right decision not just from a football point of view, but also from the point of view of business, given that Ukraine is a large, untapped market. Euro 2012 should be a stimulus for Western investment,” said Andriy Kapustin, an expert from the Euro 2012 Citizens’ Control Committee, a non-governmental organization that is tracking preparations.
But, like Ukraine’s attempts to join the European Union, Euro 2012 has stumbled up against barriers of political infighting, bureaucratic wrangling and economic slowdown. “UEFA must now regret their decision because, even in their worst nightmares, they couldn’t have imagined that Ukrainian bureaucracy has such an uncivilized attitude to such a project. It’s a tough test for integration; I hope our leaders are not idiotic enough to ruin it,” Kapustin said.
UEFA has been keeping a close eye on Ukraine’s travails. In May, the organization confirmed only Kyiv as a host city, although not for the final, citing “huge infrastructure problems.” It set specific conditions for Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv and Kharkiv on stadiums, hotels and transport infrastructure that have to be met by Nov. 30.
Four Polish cities – Warsaw, Poznan, Gdansk and Wroclaw – have already been confirmed as official host cities.Speculation persists that the tournament could be taken away from Ukraine.Although the nation’s organizers say that UEFA has no plans for a replacement, various options have been floated, including relocating some matches to Germany, if the Ukrainian cities fail to make sufficient progress by the end of November.
Kapustin said UEFA seems unlikely to completely strip Ukraine of the tournament, and that the worst-case scenario now is that only two Ukrainian cities will host the tournament, alongside six from Poland, rather than the original “four plus four” format.
The visit to Ukraine this week by Martin Kallen, the tournament director, has given some hope.
According to Yuriy Pavlenko, minister for families, youth and sport, Kallen gave a thumbs-up to the progress of reconstruction work at the Olympic Stadium.The focus of discussions also moved on to the logistics of holding the tournament. “Ukraine has entered a new stage of organizing the championship itself,” said Markian Lubkivsky, the tournament director for Ukraine, in a television interview on Aug. 19. He voiced confidence that all requirements would be met by the deadline.Some cities are closer to being ready than others.
Backed by local billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Donetsk has a 50,000-seat stadium built and set to be opened with a huge bash on Aug. 29. But the city’s airport is yet to be reconstructed and only a third of hotel requirements are met.
The stadium in Kharkiv is also ready after an overhaul financed by local businessman, Oleksandr Yaroslavsky, but major infrastructure investments are also needed.
Lviv’s stadium, on the other hand, is three months behind schedule and construction workers are set to start working round the clock. Meanwhile, no investors expressed interest in revamping the city’s dilapidated airport during two recent tenders.
The main concern in all the cities is infrastructure.
Battling with a crisis that saw the economy shrink 20 percent in the first quarter of the year, Ukraine simply hasn’t had the resources – estimated at 15 billion euro – to plunge into airports, roads and hotels. The political standoff between President Victor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko hasn’t helped.
After parliament passed a law to allow Hr 9.8 billion to be transferred from the National Bank of Ukraine to the state budget for preparations for Euro 2012, Yushchenko vetoed it. If parliament overturns the veto at an extraordinary session on Aug. 21 – as seems likely with the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko and the Party of Regions expressing support – the president suggested on Aug. 19 that he would challenge the decision in the Constitutional Court. He called on parliament not to carry out “colossal expenditures that have been poorly thought out” and could lead to inflation.
While the organizers say they are optimistic that the country will deliver and the tournament will go ahead as planned, Ukrainians remain not entirely convinced. In a July survey by the IFAK Ukraine market research company, 32 percent thought it would lose the tournament all together.
