Rules of the vote

The vote will take place behind closed doors at Uefa's headquarters in Nyon Keystone

In simple terms, Thursday's decision on who will host the 2008 European football championships is down to Uefa's 14-strong executive committee.

In reality, though, things are a little bit more complicated.

Uefa has decided that no committee member should be able to vote if his country (the members are all men) is still in the running to host the tournament.

Seven bids

With a record seven bids from no less than 14 nations hoping to stage the event, though, that would prevent six committee members from voting.

To get around this, Uefa plans to produce a shortlist of two or three bids following the first vote, allowing members from eliminated countries to then join in subsequent voting rounds. The exact voting rules are set out below.

Uefa’s executive committee comprises the following members: Uefa president Lennart Johansson (Sweden), Senez Erzik (Turkey), Per Ravn Omdal (Norway), Angel María Villar Llona (Spain), Geoffrey Thompson (England), Dr Mathieu Sprengers (Netherlands), Dr Viacheslav Koloskov (Russia), Marios Lefkaritis (Cyprus), Eggert Magnusson (Iceland), Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder (Germany), Dr Joseph Mifsud (Malta), Michel Platini (France), Giangiorgio Spiess (Switzerland), Henri Roemer (Luxembourg).

How Uefa will decide

1. The Uefa National Teams Committee will make an evaluation based on the evaluation reports.

2. Apart from the technical evaluation, the committee members will also take into account other considerations such as government support and enthusiasm of the bidding country’s public.

3. This committee will not eliminate bids. Instead, at the end of the debates each eligible member shall deliver a personal ranking of the bids based on objective judgement. This will be communicated to the Uefa Executive Committee.

4. The eight eligible members of the Executive Committee then enter in a discussion, with the objective to reduce the seven bids to two or three. A simple majority is required for this elimination process.

5. Once the Executive Committee has made the selection of the two or three bids for final decision, all Executive Committee members not affected by the remaining bids are admitted into the discussion and take part in the decision.

6. At the end of the discussions, the members will vote. If a bidder receives an absolute majority (half plus one of the eligible members) then this bidder is chosen to be the host of EURO 2008.

7. If no such majority is obtained, then the bidder with the lowest vote is eliminated. In the event of an equal vote between the two bidders with the lowest vote, an additional ballot involving these two bidders will have to take place in order to eliminate one of them.

8. In this case, a final ballot will occur between the two remaining bidders. The bidder with the highest vote wins.

9. If there is no decision according to this procedure, the vote of the chairman is decisive.

swissinfo

Euro bid

Seven bid teams from 14 countries are competing to host the tournament.

Switzerland and Austria are earmarking SFr170 million for the organisational costs, but any final deficit would be covered by Uefa.

Matches would be staged in Bern, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Vienna, Klagenfurt, Salzburg and Innsbruck.