The law obliging the National Bank of Ukraine to allocate UAH 9.8 billion for the country's preparations for the Euro 2012 European Football Championship is aimed at financing the presidential election campaign, rather than preparing for the tournament, according to Arseniy Yatseniuk, the leader of NGO Front of Changes.
“I cannot describe the latest decision on the Euro 2012 law as a law that finances the Euro 2012 campaign. I describe it as a law that finances the election campaign,” he said at a briefing in Donetsk on Friday, the Front of Changes’ press service reported.
Yatseniuk said that the emission of the hryvnia, to which the NBU was obliged to resort in order to transfer respective funds to the state budget, would certainly influence the exchange rate of the national currency.
“Funds should have been spent on Euro 2012 instead of wasting them to buy voters. And this had to be done in 2008,” he said.
“I think that the situation with budget financing is very difficult. The commissioning of Euro 2012 objects will be delayed, but everything currently remains in our hands,” Yatseniuk said.
He said that the holding of Euro 2012 in Ukraine was not “an issue to be resolved by [Premier Yulia] Tymoshenko, [President Viktor] Yuschenko, or [opposition leader Viktor] Yanukovych.”
“This is the responsibility of the whole country,” he said.
As reported, the Ukrainian parliament, at an extraordinary session on August 21, overrode a presidential veto of amendments to the state budget for 2009, which oblige the National Bank of Ukraine to transfer UAH 9.8 billion to the state budget to finance the construction of Euro 2012 facilities.
