Kiev - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko on Friday to discuss joint preparations to host the Euro 2012 football championship. The UEFA in April 2007 named the two countries co-hosts of the high profile tournament. Since then Warsaw and Kiev, both hard-hit by the international financial crisis, have struggled to ready stadiums and tourist infrastructure.
Tusk during his one-day working visit to the Ukrainian capital was scheduled to chair with Tymoshenko a meeting of a Polish-Ukrainian state committee charged to speed preparations.
Both Poland and Ukraine currently lack sufficient stadiums, hotel space, and transportation infrastructure to handle the 32-team Euro 2012 championship, and an estimated one million visiting football fans, UEFA officials said early July.
Ukraine is rated as being worse off with an almost total lack of hotel rooms outside Kiev, and a Soviet-built transportation infrastructure requiring an estimated five billion dollars in repairs and modernisation, Kommanda newspaper reported.
UEFA head Michel Platini on July 3 said Ukraine stood to lose three of its planned four game venues to Poland or even Germany, if Ukraine's government fails to step up its preparation effort.
Tymoshenko last week told Kiev reporters Ukraine would fulfill all its obligations as a Euro 2012 host. Her government on July 1 passed into law legislation authorising more than 1.3 billion dollars in funding for tournament preparations.
