The final countdown

The Euro-2012 is 400 days away. According to Markiyan Lubkivsky, the tournament director in Ukraine, fans have already bought out almost half the tickets and UEFA is preparing a special soccer ball to be formally presented in Kyiv on December 2. Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to get ready for the world’s third largest event, and to debate on how to do it.

The way Ukraine is preparing for the European soccer championship has been harshly criticized almost since the very beginning. At first, doubts were cast on the terms: many people claimed that, given the current pace, Ukraine would not manage to get ready in time for the Euro-2012. Yet soon thereafter, in 2010, when the pace markedly grew, Ukrainians began to be told about the cost of this “growth.” For, to save time, the Cabinet decided to allot money for the Euro-2012 from the state budget without any bidding procedures. Moreover, the land question has caused as lot of uproar. One such conflict recently occurred in Lviv. The city’s community sued the government for having illegally alloted land that in fact belonged to city residents for the construction of a stadium. The builders also have quite a few problems. The Kyiv-based Euro-2012 facility recently became the matter of a heated debate once again. According to the official website of Visnyk derzhzakupivel, the National Agency in Charge of the European Soccer Championship in 2012 has purchased the right to alter the project documentation for the reconstruction of the National Olympic Complex in Kyiv. This means 29.4 million hryvnias from the state budget will be spent just on paperwork. What is more, reconstruction costs will jump to 4.6 million euros.

It should also be noted that, unlike Kharkiv and Donetsk, Kyiv and Lviv never managed to attract private investors. Now that it is a bit too late to speak of this, and experts have concluded that the initial conditions were unfavorable. So, as Borys Kolesnikov said later last year, the Euro-2012 preparations will cost Ukrainian taxpayers five billion euros. But the Cabinet insists that this amount should not be considered as an expenditure: it is better to interpret it as governmental investment, for the championship will take place once, but the brand new infrastructure will remain behind. Yet, we have heard, for some reason, that no clear-cut financial information from the officials has backed promises to produce a social effect by building good roads and high-market hotels and bringing the service sector into line with European standards. For if it is an investment, not an expenditure article, we are supposed to hear such terms as “payback period” and “follow-up profitability.” In simpler terms, we would like our government to say when and how our money will come back into our pockets. Otherwise, the impression is that the Ukrainians are just buying those nice roads, hotels and staff for five billion euros.

But no matter how heatedly we debate about the Euro-2012, it remains obvious that we must host the championship and do it on a decent level at that. So let us hope the remaining 400 days will produce positive results.