UEFA Euro 2012

Organization of the 2012 European Football Championship 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. UEFA will now conduct site visits to candidate countries in September. The host will be chosen in December 2006.

Italy has already hosted the European Football Championship finals in 1968 and 1980, and also hosted the

in 1934 and 1990. 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, though Croatia's capital, Zagreb, hosted one semifinal and the third-place match of Euro 1976 as part of Yugoslavia.

Hungary will hope for a successful bid as they failed in both the Euro 2004 and Euro 2008 bid.

The candidates

The following cities have been proposed:

• Italy: Rome, Milan, Bari, Florence, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Udine and, should the tournament be extended to 24 teams Bologna, Cagliari, Genoa and Verona: the same stadia pool as for Italia 90.
• Croatia/Hungary: Zagreb (CRO), Split (CRO), Rijeka (CRO), Osijek (CRO), Budapest (HUN), Székesfehérvár (HUN), Győr (HUN), Debrecen (HUN)
• Poland/Ukraine: Chorzów (POL), Gdańsk (POL), Kraków (POL), Poznań (POL), Warsaw (POL), Wrocław (POL), Dnipropetrovsk (UKR), Donetsk (UKR), Kiev (UKR), Lviv (UKR)

External links

• UEFA official website
• Italian bid official website
• Polish-Ukrainian bid official website
• Hungarian-Croatian bid official website