OREANDA-NEWS. On February 08, 2007 President Victor Yushchenko held a meeting of EURO 2012 Preparatory coordinative board, reported the Official website www.president.gov.ua.

Addressing those present the President expressed worries about slow pace of preparation to the event and absence of proper coordination between all the involved bodies.

V. Yushchenko reminded that Cabinet of Ministers by Coordinative board’s decision of January 21was assigned to work out a plan of preparatory measures to EURO 2012 for 2008-2012 by February 1st. There is also a draft law on the subject to be forwarded to the Verkhovna Rada by March 1. Pointing to lack of any substantial progress in preparation of both the President urged the authorities to examine the questions.

Beside that V. Yushchenko drew attention to improper preparation and adoption of branch and regional and municipal programs of preparation measures. By February 5th only 9 out of 19 branch programs and 10 out of 26 regional programs were prepared.

The President also reminded that by February 1st Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv were to call up special working groups on processing investors propositions to speed up the process (a so called “Single investment window”). Yet these working groups remained on paper due to lack of understanding of the procedure by local executive authorities and passiveness of relevant central executive authorities in that field. The latter, although responsible for forming state investment policy, failed to perform their duties such as providing legislative and methodological implementation of “Single investment window” mechanisms.

Another question of urgent importance, which the President mentioned, is guaranteeing proper financing of preparatory measures to EURO 2012 and balanced distribution of costs during 2008 and following years. To achieve that to V.Yuschenko’s mind a single budgetary program of financing EURO 2012 preparation is necessary.

The President also drew attention of those present to recent concerns about preparation to EURO 2012 expressed by UEFA to the Ukrainian side. “I think that is a good stimulus for us to treat all planed organization and applied measures on preparation to EURO 2012 seriously.”