Wednesday, 08.02.2012
For the convenience of fans, going to visit Ukraine this summer for the matches of a final part of continental football championship, on the eve and during the tournament in exchange offices of the main European airports the Ukrainian national currency - hryvnia - will be on sale. The Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, the Minister of Infrastructure Boris Kolesnikov, supervising the process of the country’s preparation for the European football championship, has told about that.
According to the official, availability of hryvnia in exchange offices of the European airports will allow to reduce the working load in exchange offices of Ukrainian Euro 2012 hosting cities. “In such a way we hope to avoid the situation, when 10-15 thousand foreign visitors arrive at Boryspil International Airport and try to buy local currency simultaneously”, – Boris Kolesnikov has noted.
Furthermore, according to his information, for the comfort of foreign fans for the period of Euro 2012 all procedures of Ukrainian border crossing will be simplified. 32 points will be involved most actively in the admission of the tournament participants and guests: 16 of them are automobile, 11 – railway and 5 – air border crossing points.
During the football championship foreign fans will be able to pass border points for 20 seconds only. According to officials of the border control service, it is exactly the time they will need to identify the person. The department has developed a special system which allows receiving the necessary information about a foreign tourist before he sets foot on Ukrainian land.
“For example, the Pole had passed a control in his airport and got into the plane. During the flight, his data is transferred to the Ukrainian border guards at the airports and processed there, the potential intruders from the blacklist are defined. Our officials need only to identify the tourist. It takes 20 seconds at most, – they tell in the state border service of Ukraine. – And the passengers for whom Ukraine is forbidden, will be met at the plane’s ramp and returned home”.
They also plan to develop the similar scheme of the admission for fans using railway transport. Essential paper work will be done during train movement, and by the time of leaving the carriage, the person will have no procedures to pass, as frontier guards note. The process of Ukrainian border crossing for tourists traveling by car will be simplified in a similar way.
For UEFA members, football delegations and organized groups of fans everything will be even easier – special traffic lanes will be created on border for them. “We have decided to separate them from usual tourists not to provoke jams, – explain in the frontier service. – We also introduce on border a so-called principle of one stop. For example, the tourists crossing the Ukrainian-Polish border by car or by buses will be checked in one point both by Ukrainian and Polish frontier guards. And the same scheme will work on borders with the other neighboring countries of Ukraine”.
