The Sports Minister Yuri Pavlenko said the Government and local officials had come to realise the stakes involved in staging the event.

 

He said: "Authorities in Ukraine will not let this chance slip through their fingers and will prepare the country for 2012 in the best way possible.

 

"This will be the best European Championship ever.

 

"We will take concrete steps to counter any suggestion by our competitors that this chance might be taken away from us and the championship held elsewhere."

 

Earlier this week insidethegames reported how the Ukraine Government had clinched a deal with a property developer to tear down part of a shopping centre adjacent to Kyiv's main stadium that UEFA said violated crowd control rules and could jeopardise plans to hold the final there.

 

Pavlenko said a plan to renovate the 84,000-seat Olympic Stadium, first built in the 1920s and used in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, could now be approved next week.

 

Pavlenko said new stadiums in the other two host cities -- Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk -- would be completed this year and the two cities in reserve -- Odessa and Kharkiv were proceeding well with their preparations.

 

He said: "I have no doubt at all that all stadiums will be ready by 2010 in order to take part in the 2012 championship."