Four Polish cities: Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw and Poznan and the Ukrainian city of Kiev have been confirmed by UEFA Executive Committee as the host cities of the EURO 2012 championships.

Danuta Isler reports

After months of hard work, signing contracts to build stadiums and infrastructure and the media speculatation its has been confirmed: four Polish cities - Warsaw, Gdańsk, Wrocław and Poznan will host the EURO 2012 football championships. Following the announcement the Polish Football Federation president Grzegorz Lato said the federation will do all that's necessary to ensure the best organisation of the event in Poland.

The Polish authorities, Football Federation and sports ministry have lobbied till the very end to have six Polish cities taken into consideration as the sites of the EURO 2012 tournament. The cities in question - Warsaw, Gdansk in the north, Krakow in the south, Wroclaw and Poznan in the west as well as the Silesian town of Chorzów have been in different stages of preparations.The most advanced is Poland's capital which will host the opening match of the tournament and Poznan where the construction of the stadium is to be completed as early as next year. 

Wrapping up its session in Bucharest UEFA also announced that three Ukrainian cities - Lviv, Donetsk and Kharkiv - have yet to prove their progress in preparing to host the tournament while Kiev may also be stripped of the final. 

EURO 2012 championships are scheduled to begin on June 9 and end on July 1, 2012.

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