Analysis: A sporting chance to show the world a new Eastern Europe

THESE are nervous times in Poland and Ukraine. Football’s European championship is now less than a month away, and fingers are crossed that one of the world’s biggest sporting spectacles will show the world a region that has embraced a bright and positive future and not one struggling to shed the awkward burden of its communist past.

For both the host countries and the former communist region as a whole the tournament is far more than just about football. It is the biggest sporting event to be held in the old “Eastern Europe” since the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and provides a unique opportunity for the region to show the world just how far it has progressed.

Much of Central and Eastern Europe remains a mystery to many in the rest of Europe, despite it covering a huge swath of the continent. The Iron Curtain fell long ago but in a way the old communist bloc remains behind a barrier: lack of knowledge and ageing perceptions.

The football event provides an opportunity to expose people – in theory – to a more modern and progressive Central and Eastern Europe far removed from the one characterised by the listless shabbiness which pervaded everything from architecture to politics for most of the post-war decades.

Poland, in particular, has invested millions of pounds – along with funnelling even more millions in EU funding – into sprucing up dejected stations and airports, and into attempts to invigorate the country’s creaking transport infrastructure. The idea is that people coming to watch the football will encounter not the Poland of Lech Walesa, moustaches and Solidarity, but a modern, efficient and vibrant European state.

But of course it is all a gamble. The intense spotlight of publicity the football will bring may focus correctly on the some of the impressive efforts Poland has made for the tournament one moment, but then shift onto highlighting failings the next. Motorway connections are due to fall short of expectations, and fans travelling by rail will have to endure many long hours on clanking trains.

There is also the risk that Poland’s hooligan problem may raise its ugly head – violence blights Polish football in ways reminiscent of the bad days of English football in the 1980s.

In Ukraine, the risks are even higher. Attempts to use the tournament to portray the country as a modern European state have already floundered over the treatment of Yulia Tymoshenko, the imprisoned and apparently assaulted former prime minister. If her situation, and that of other people subjected to what the EU has called “selective justice”, is not improved with haste then the huge spotlight of publicity spawned by the football may well cast Ukraine as a state still bearing a wicked and Soviet political culture.

Euro 2012 provides a wonderful opportunity for Central and Eastern Europe to show the world just how far it has progressed in the last 20 years. It also provides a strong incentive to make belated but necessary changes. Hopefully it seizes both opportunities.

• Matthew Day writes for The Scotsman on Eastern Europe.