Five years from June 5, 2007

Hryhorii Surkis, the president of the Soccer Federation of Ukraine, says that Euro-2012 will not just reconcile politicians with each other, despite their “coloring,” but, more importantly, increase Ukrainians’ well-being and boost the reputation of our state.

“By choosing Ukraine as ‘the heart of soccer,’ the UEFA leadership has given Ukraine a unique opportunity to become a highly developed European state,” Surkis emphasized at a recent press conference. “This is a case of a historic renaissance, when soccer unites politicians and the public for the sake of a single purpose. In five years we will be living in a different country, which we would not be able to build in 30-40 years, under other conditions.”

Ukraine’s Minister of Economy Anatolii Kinakh provided more details about the government’s preparations for Euro-2012. The first thing to be done is to modernize stadiums in Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv, finish building sports complexes in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, construct new hotels, airports, and thousands kilometers of highways, improve the communications network, and re-equip border checkpoints for foreign guests.

“There will be enough work for everyone: state officials, members of the public, businessmen, and especially parliamentarians,” Kinakh stressed. “They must adopt legislative acts that will not frighten investors away, but will encourage them to take part in rebuilding the state. The same goes for foreign investments, which will involve the injection of several billions euros of domestic and foreign capital.”

In Poland the situation with the funds needed to hold Euro- 2012 is much simpler, says Adam Olkowicz, the head of the Polish Soccer Federation. Nineteen billion euros should come from the European Union (of which Poland is a member) and only seven billion from the state budget. The Poles will build eight new airports and improve hotels and highways.

However, even Poland has a significant problem with its current legislation. Olkowicz says that there is an urgent need for the government to adopt new legislative norms that will reduce the number of bureaucratic hurdles for investors.

Meanwhile, the Poles have planned many business projects jointly with Ukraine.

Responding to a journalist who asked whether the UEFA Congress may change its decision about holding Euro-2021 in Ukraine because of the political events in our country, Hryhorii Surkis assured his listeners that this is impossible. He brought up the clashes that took place during the recent elections in France, where numerous conflicts, including fights and torched cars, and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which demonstrated the intelligence and power of Ukrainians, who did not shed a single drop of blood or damage buildings. No one deprived the French of their right to hold the soccer championship, he noted.

Referring to the recent clashes between riot police and fans at the Dynamo-Shakhtar game on May 27, Surkis emphasized that security is a very important problem. “The Office of the Prosecutor-General has received reports that criminal actions have been brought against those representatives of law-enforcement organs who exceeded their authority. I think that the courts should punish them in order to convince the public, above all the world community, that in Ukraine law and order is respected,” the head of the Ukrainian Soccer Federation said.