Euro 2012 in Ukraine may mean cutting standards (News Feature)

By Stefan Korshak May 21, 2010, 13:22 GMT

Kiev - Ukraine will host its share of Euro 2012 as planned, but fans attending games in the former Soviet republic will be served by sub-standard accommodation and tourist infrastructure, industry experts say.

'We will solve the problem as we always have: By waiting to the last minute and then doing a sloppy, rushed job,' said Artem Frankov, editor-in-chief of Ukraine's popular Football magazine.

Ukraine is co-hosting the 2012 tournament with Poland but efforts by Kiev to get ready have been bedeviled by planning delays and funding shortages.

Frankov and other Ukrainian sports and tourism industry officials said in interviews that Europe's footballing organizing body UEFA is likely to give final approval to all four Ukrainian cities tapped as game venues.

But fans intending to attend matches in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkiv, or Lviv all will experience service standards lower than in neighbouring Poland, or what the UEFA expects.

'I expect we (Ukraine) will in the end manage to host Euro 2012,' said Tatiana Tymoshenko, spokeswoman for for the Ukrainian Federation of Tourist Enterprises (UFTE).

'But unfortunately it will be very much a case of meeting the UEFA's minimum standards...or adjusting the standard downward.'

Ukrainian officials have claimed they are pouring cash and energy into the country's Euro 2012 preparation programme, and that although there are currently are delays, stadium construction, transportation infrastructure overhaul and hospitality industry development will be back on schedule by autumn.

'I expect we will be on track to meet all deadlines, within the next two or three months,' said vice premier Borys Kolesnykov, the government leader on the Euro 2012 preparation effort, in a recent interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

'I have every confidence the championship will take place in Ukraine as planned.'

Recent activity at Kiev's Olympic stadium, the slated site for the Euro 2012 final, gives some grounds to Kolesnykov's confidence.

Object of a tortuous court wrangle between warring tycoons over land ownership, and long seeming to passers-by little more than a parking lot for earth-moving equipment slowly rusting in Kiev's notoriously wet weather, these days Ukraine's biggest sports venue is a hive of activity.

Work at the Olympic stadium is now proceeding round-the-clock, with the massive site fronting Kiev's Velika Vasilkivska street lit up 24 hours a day.

Construction crews were even welding and shifting materials on May 1 and May 9 - both major national holidays in Ukraine during which, normally, it would be unthinkable for a Ukrainian boss to ask employees to be on the job. The first game in the renovated stadium will take place in September 2011, Kolesnykov said.

Another Ukrainian problem area singled out by UEFA inspectors - airports and their inability to handle passenger surges, and lack of traveller services - likewise is showing progress, according to news reports.

Kiev's Boryspil airport will open a new terminal doubling passenger capacity at the end of June. Runway lengthening and terminal overhauls demanded by the UEFA have now begun in Lviv and Donetsk, and a 377-million-dollar second Boryspil terminal will be online in November 2011, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported.

But gaps nonetheless remain, among them a brand-new 33,000-seat stadium in Lviv being built from the ground up, with actual construction work started only in March. The venue may yet be a Euro 2012 game venue, but only with concessions on deadlines and quality, experts said.

'There is no question that they can build the Lviv stadium in time for Euro 2012, but they can't do it by the UEFA 2011 summer deadline,' Frankov said.

'The UEFA might well have to change the deadline ... or accept a stadium not quite up to their normal standards.'

Were the UEFA to decide to cancel any one Ukrainian city, it would be Lviv, the regional Zahid.net news agency reported.

Ukraine's hospitality industry likewise remains woefully unprepared to handle an estimated one million visitors expected during the tournament, with Kiev and Donetsk possessing only half, and provincial Kharkiv only 15 per cent of the hotel rooms needed when Euro 2012 matches are played, Tymoshenko said.

'So there will be all sorts of stop-gap measures: students kicked out of university dormitories, river steamers serving as temporary hotels, tent villages - anything to meet the UEFA-stipulated accommodation minimum,' she said.

On transport, Frankov said: 'Our national rail company can handle the extra passengers, they will just add more trains.

'But there is no way, given the time remaining, to fix enough track so the trains will run at high speed, or improve the carriages up to western comfort levels.

'To attend Euro 2012 in our country, foreign guests will have to rough it a bit.'