The European Athletics Executive Board has invited Göteborg in Sweden, the region of Silesia in Poland, and Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to proceed with bidding for the 2024 European Athletics Championships.
The seven-man board made the decision based on their review of an Evaluation Panel’s report and discussions with the prospective bidders.
“An important topic of the individual discussions was the presentation by each bidder on the overall concept of their project for the event focusing on the key aspects of event organisation,” European Athletics said in a statement.
The next stage in this revised bidding process is for the Member Federations and bidding destinations to sign a bid undertaking by March 2019. The submission deadline for the full bidding application is in June 2019.
The pool is set to be reduced further still at that stage. “The goal is to select the two strongest bids, based on the strategic, financial and operational evaluation criteria,” said European Athletics.
The bids will then be presented to the European Athletics Council in April 2020 to decide on where to allocate the hosting rights.
This Council comprises European Athletics President and three Vice Presidents and 13 other elected members, plus the CEO of European Athletics and IAAF President.
All future European Athletics Championships that take place in Summer Olympic years will follow this new process. “This new strategy focuses on individual discussions and a continuous interactive evaluation from the first step of a bidding process between the bidders and European Athletics in order to achieve a common goal of delivering a successful event,” said European Athletics.
The next European Athletics Championships will take place in Paris on 26-30 August 2020, after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Bids for the following European Athletics Championships will take a different route, as it falls outside of a Summer Olympic Year and forms part of the multi-sport European Championships.
The second European Championships takes place in the summer of 2022. For information about bidding, visit https://www.europeanchampionships.com/become-host-city