Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Dear Editor,

The UEFA has officially announced the names of four Polish cities and only one for Ukraine, Kyiv, to host Euro-2012 soccer games. The final decision on the remaining Ukrainian cities is pending until November 30.

Just before the meeting the UEFA had doubts that Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk will be able to host Euro-2012 on the appropriate level, according to a report of Reuters. Three years ahead of the international event, Lviv airport is still a sleepy Soviet-era relic with mural depicting proletarian portraits, a manual (!) system of luggage delivery and outdated passport control booths which would not be able to cope with the thousands of foreign football fans.

The Soviet-style station and the surrounding area are also inappropriate to welcome tens of thousands of foreign soccer supporters. Moreover, the roads and public transport in Lviv are still in an appalling situation and there is no sign of dynamic construction activity.

However, Andriy Sadovy, Lviv city mayor, is still confident that Lviv can manage it on time but there is still a long way to 2012.

In 2007, the EU issued a grant to help finance the development of the tourism industry in Lviv. The money was to be used to provide bilingual road signs (Ukrainian and English), establish information points and introduce a series of multilingual plaques around the town to allow the thousands of non-Ukrainian speaking tourists pouring into the city to get more of their trips. It is a fact that around the city the road indications are now in two languages but in Lviv itself, everything is in Ukrainian.

Strangely though it may be for a city whose historic centre was listed in 1998 as part of UNESCO World Heritage, there is no visible indication about the location of a tourism office and it is even difficult to find a map, except in some restaurants and international hotels. I managed to collect four maps. One of them named “Lviv in pocket” does not even seem keen to promote a dynamic image of Lviv as it says about the 2012 soccer competition: “As one of Ukraine’s host cities, Lviv anxiously awaits the fanatical joyous surge expected to fill the city.

However, due to bureaucratic hurdles planners have made only trivial progress on the necessary new stadium, road reconstruction and airport expansion. It may take a miracle to save the city’s chances to host.”

Four maps and no reference to a synagogue or a Jewish community centre while a large share of the population was Jewish before WW II. Four maps and impossible to identify the current denomination of the churches. No mention of places of worship for Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Buddhists. Impossible for tourists to know to which church they should go if they are Roman Catholic or Orthodox. The Church of All Saints is presented as the “former” Benedictine Church and the Church of Purification as the “former” Church and Nunnery of the Barefoot Carmelite Nuns. The Church of Maria Magdalena or the Church of the Blessed Eucharist might be Greek-Catholic or Roman Catholic.

How to know if you don’t speak Ukrainian? Don’t try to find a church identified as Orthodox on any map and if you ask for a Ukrainian Orthodox Church affiliated to Moscow Patriarchate, your question might not be welcome as I experienced on several occasions. Four maps and no information about how to use public transport.

Almost no museum or historical place has explanatory notices in other languages than Ukrainian: all the churches, the National Museum, the Historic Museum, the Museum of History of Religions, the Italian Yard, and so on. So many opportunities missed to publicize the culture and complex history of Lviv, its region and Ukraine. There is still a long way to 2012.

Willy Fautré isdirector of Human Rights Without Frontiers (Brussels). He visited Lviv in May 2009.