Ukraine favors participation of companies of the Untied Arab Emirates in projects with the preparations for the Euro 2012 European football championship finals.

Ukrainian News learned this from the Ukrainian presidential press service.

On April 30, Oksana Sliusarenko, a deputy head of the Secretariat of President Viktor Yuschenko, met in Abu Dhabi with UAE Minister of Foreign Trade Lubna al-Qasimi, who is a co-chairman of the Ukraine-UAE intergovernmental commission for trade and economic cooperation.

The meeting addressed the topic of Ukraine's investment opportunities and the prospects for the participation of companies of the UAE in projects related to the preparations for the Euro 2012 European football championship finals.

Sliusarenko gave the minister Ukraine's national program of preparations for the football championship and outlined main infrastructure projects.

Sliusarenko said there were promising investment opportunities in Ukraine. She said Ukraine wanted to study the experience of the United Arab Emirates in the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects. She further invited potential investors to come to international investment forum in Kyiv on May 17 entitled "Ukraine: Investment. Infrastructure, Euro 2012."

The sides also discussed the situation in, prospects for development of, relations in trade, the banking and finance sector, the oil sector, and other sectors. The sides further marked the growth in commodity turnover between Ukraine and the UAE and called for more effective use of the potential of the cooperation.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, on April 22, the authorities of the Ukrainian and Polish cities to host the Euro 2012 European football championship finals agreed to coordinate their efforts in the preparations for the Euro 2012.

The following cities will host matches of Euro 2012 European football championship finals: Kyiv, Lviv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw, and Poznan. Odesa, Kharkiv, Krakow and Chorzow are reserve cities. Warsaw is scheduled to host the opening match of the Euro 2012, while Kyiv is scheduled to host the final match.