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. In April 2007 the European football association UEFA 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 chaired with Tymoshenko a meeting of a Polish-Ukrainian state committee charged with speeding preparations.
Both Poland and Ukraine currently lack sufficient game venues, 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 worst 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.
Tusk, speaking at a joint press conference with Tymoshenko said that in Poland's opinion the tournament's venue plan should remain unchanged, with four game sites each in Poland and Ukraine.
"I believe that our governments' responsibilities include not just the support of the host cities, but advancement and support of the present 4 x 4 scheme with the UEFA," Tusk said.
"From Poland's point of view, the present 4 x 4 plan is not just a matter of solidarity, but in the obvious interest of both countries," he said.
"The schedule is that the opening game will be in Poland, and the final will be in Ukraine," Tymoshenko said. "That is how things should be, we have supported this position and we will continue to support it."
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.
