EM bureaucracy
“Processes often take forever” – European Championship organizers complain about Germany’s backwardness
Status: 10:21 am | Reading time: 2 minutes
Markus Stenger (r.) and Andreas Schär, Managing Directors of Euro 2024 GmbH
Source: picture alliance/dpa/Kessler-Sportfotografie/Jürgen Kessler
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Shortly before the start of the European Football Championship, the organizers of the tournament are criticizing Germany as a location. Whether it’s bureaucracy, digitalization or infrastructure – the managing directors of Euro 2024 GmbH choose clear words.
The organizers of the European Football Championship have been very critical of the bureaucracy in Germany. “I don’t think that we will be able to remove a single bureaucratic hurdle in Germany with the European Championship,” said Markus Stenger, co-managing director of Euro 2024 GmbH, in an interview with the “Frankfurter Rundschau”: “The processes often take forever. Germany is not digitalized enough.” Stenger also explained, however, that at least with the ten European Championship cities, it had been possible to “solve problems in concrete terms.”
When asked how satisfied the organizers were with the support from politicians and authorities, there was “no easy answer,” said the second Euro managing director, Andreas Schär. “The problem is this: a tournament this big is like inviting an elephant into a china shop.”
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If this elephant is invited in, “and the poor guy wants to turn around in the store, but you can’t push the shelves to the side, things can break,” said Schär. “That would be unsatisfactory for both sides.”
The managing directors are also critical of the infrastructure issue. “In fact, one must say that no miracles happen for a European Football Championship. Transport planning has much longer lead times,” said Stenger. And Schär added: “The infrastructure problem in Germany is gigantic. In some areas, there is still a lot of catching up to do.”
Massive criticism of the federal government
Both had already expressed massive criticism of the lack of support from the federal government at the end of last year. “What the federal government is currently providing is not enough to fully exploit the opportunities of a European Championship,” said the Swiss Schär at the time.
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This certainly had an effect and led to improvements, he said in retrospect: “The federal government took note of this, even if they found it inappropriate that we had expressed ourselves so offensively. But internally we had already done this several times beforehand. After we made it public, the right conclusions were drawn.”
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Euro 2024 GmbH is a so-called joint venture between the European football union UEFA and the German Football Association for the organization of the tournament. “UEFA provides the budget,” said Stenger. The DFB is taking less financial risk. However, the association is left with comparatively smaller profits. 15 million euros is “not unrealistic in that order of magnitude,” said Stenger.
