2012 UEFA European Football Championship

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The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, or Euro 2012 for short, will be the 14th quadrennial top-level European football event. It will be held in the summer of the year 2012. The host nation(s) is/are yet to be selected. Euro 2012 is currently scheduled to feature 16 national teams.^[1]

1 Host selection process
- 1.1 Bid history
- 1.2 Voting procedure
2 The candidates
3 External links

[edit] Host selection process

[edit] Bid history

The organization of the event was initially contested for by five bids representing seven countries: Croatia/Hungary (joint bid), Greece, Italy, Poland/Ukraine (joint bid), and Turkey.

On November 8, 2005, UEFA's Executive Committee whittled the candidates down to a short list of three:

Italy (11 Committee member votes)
Croatia/Hungary (9 votes)
Poland/Ukraine (7 votes)

Turkey and Greece were eliminated with 6 and 2 votes respectively.

On May 31, 2006 all three bids completed the second phase of the process by submitting more detailed dossiers.

In September 2006, UEFA conducted site visits to candidate countries. Shortly thereafter, in October, it decided to postpone the actual decision making time (which was set to December 2006).

The host is set to be chosen on April 18, 2007 in Cardiff, Wales.

[edit] Voting procedure

The voting will be made in maximum two rounds. For the vote to be valid, there must be a quorum in the meeting room, i.e. at least eight Committee members, excluding the president and his deputy who do not have the right to vote. In the first round, each member has one vote. If a bid receives an absolute majority, then it becomes the winner and the second round is not required.

If there is no absolute majority in the first round, the bid with the fewest votes will be eliminated and the remaining two bids will stand for further voting. It is possible, however, that one bid will receive the most votes in the first round and that the other two will have the same number of votes. In this case, there will be an additional vote between the two second-place bids, where one is rejected and the other one goes to the second round. If this additional vote too ends in a tie, the President of the Executive Committee will cast a tie-breaking vote.

If all three bids receive the same number of votes in the first round, then the President decides which one is to be rejected.

In the second round, the bid with the most votes wins and is awarded the organization of Euro 2012.

The voting committee is composed of 14 members:

Michel Platini (France) - President
Senes Erzik (Turkey)
Geoffrey Thompson (England)
Angel María Villar Llona (Spain)
Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder (Germany)
Marios N. Lefkaritis (Cyprus)
Dr Franco Carraro (Italy)
Dr Viacheslav Koloskov (Russia)
Dr Gilberto Madaíl (Portugal)
Dr Joseph Mifsud (Malta)
Per Ravn Omdal (Norway)
Mircea Sandu (Romania)
Dr Mathieu Sprengers (Netherlands)
Grigoryi Surkis (Ukraine)

Surkis and Carraro will not entitled to vote in any of the ballots, as they represent candidate countries. (UEFA official voting rules) As President, Platini is not eligible to vote except in case of a tie. This leaves 11 votes available for the three competing bids.

[edit] The candidates

(in order of votes received)

[edit] Italy

(11 votes)

The following cities have been proposed by the Italian Football Federation:

Rome, Milan, Bari, Florence, Naples, Palermo, Turin, and Udine in all cases
Bologna, Cagliari, Genoa and Verona in addition, should the tournament be extended to 24 teams

The stadia pool is the same as for Italia 90. Naples, Palermo, and Turin will have new stadia built while the rest will have their current stadia renovated.

Italy has already hosted the European Football Championship finals in 1968 and 1980, and also hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1934 and 1990.

The Italian bid appears to be the most solid of the three due to Italy's generally excellent transportation infrastructure, the wide availability of lodging for visiting fans, and the Italian football association's past experience in organizing final rounds. None of the other short-list candidates has ever hosted the finals of a major football tournament independently or as part of a joint bid, with the partial exception of Croatia. Also, the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin demonstrated the Italian ability to host a sporting event comparable to the Euro in magnitude. Italy's current status of World Cup holder may also prove a positive factor.

However, the recent scandal in Italy's first division and the football-related violence in Catania, which led to the death of police officer Filippo Raciti and revealed safety deficiencies in many stadia, have damaged the overall standing of Italian football. Yet the Italian government's resolve to assist football authorities in solving the problem—e.g., by introducing anti-hooliganism laws (yet to be approved) and allocating funds to immediate safety improvement measures in stadia—mitigates the risk to Italy's Euro bid. Another minor risk is potential apathy of domestic fans after repeatedly re-using the same host nation, though 22 years will have elapsed since the last major tournament at home if Italy is selected to host Euro 2012.

[edit] Hungary and Croatia

(9 votes)

The following cities have been proposed by the Hungarian Football Federation and the Croatian Football Federation:

Croatia: Zagreb, Split, Rijeka, Osijek
Hungary: Budapest, Székesfehérvár, Győr, Debrecen

Hungary is bidding for the third time consecutively after failing to win either the Euro 2004 or the Euro 2008 bid. It teamed up with Croatia after its previous partner, Austria, opted to associate with Switzerland to (successfully) bid to host Euro 2008.

Some elements of a successful bid are already in place, though gaps remain when compared to Italy. The two capital cities Budapest and Zagreb as well as the popular tourist destinations of Rijeka and Split already have decent transportation and lodging infrastructure. The favorable economic conditions of the two countries are likely to keep funds available to improve road, rail, or air networks and make the necessary infrastructure improvements in the other host cities. Desipte recent war in Croatia, country managed to build more than 700 km of new highways and expressways in last 10 years (including new highway to Hungary border). Popular interest and support is virtually guaranteed in Croatia, in the wake of the national team's strong performance in the 1990s and early 2000s, and is very likely in Hungary despite the current poor state of football there. In addition to the gaps mentioned above, several factors are hampering the bid. Lack of high quality accomodation in some areas in Hungary and Croatia, recent outbursts of hooliganism by some Croatian football fans have been a problem, as have the 2006 protests in Hungary and the protest of a group of Hungarian fans during the UEFA delegation's visit to Budapest (claiming that Hungary should focus on improving its own football instead of hosting Euro 2012).

Neither of the two countries ever hosted similar major tournaments, although Croatia's capital Zagreb did host one semifinal and the third-place match of Euro 1976 when the country was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

If the Croatian/Hungarian bid were to succeed, the final would be held in Budapest at the Ferenc Puskas Stadium, while the opening ceremony and opening match would be played at Zagreb's Maksimir Stadium.

[edit] Poland and Ukraine

(7 votes)

The following cities have been proposed by the Polish Football Association and the Football Federation of Ukraine:

Poland: Warsaw, Chorzów, Gdańsk, Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław
Ukraine: Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Lviv

The joint Polish-Ukrainian bid is considered to be interesting by many, as a way of shifting the focus towards the areas of Europe that have numerous football fans but are less developed than those in western Europe, both regarding the game development and in general.

This bid is hampered by numerous infrastructural deficiencies, however. Apart from Warsaw, Kyiv, and possibly Krakow, none of the proposed host cities has experience accommodating large numbers of visitors for extended stays. The transportation infrastructure is fair at best and sometimes poor; after their visit, the UEFA delegates themselves complained publicly about the bad state of the road between Gdańsk and Lviv. The logistical border-crossing issues are present as well. More recently, government interference has emerged as a problem in Poland.