Circular Letter 2 / 1999

Written by Heinz Herzog, WebAdmin

Monday, 24 December 2007, id:299 Article cached on Friday, 25 July 2008 05:57:00

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To all

European Chess Federations

February 19,1999

Dear Friends,

on February 13, 1999 a meeting of the ECU Board took place in Dortmund / Germany. I would like to inform you about the most important points of this meeting.

The Board took notice of the request of the City of Dortmund to organize one of the next Individual World Championships. Taking into consideration the long chess tradition in Dortmund, the Board unanimously supported this request and will ask the FIDE-President to contact Dortmund in order to finalize details.

President Boris Kutin presented the new ECU logo which has been designed by Mr. Licul, a famous Slovenian artist.

Treasurer Egon Ditt will prepare the budget 1999 and 2000 for the European Continental Assembly 1999.

Finally 10 bids for holding the European Team Championship were received. After two secret votes within the Board it was decided, that the European Team Championship will be held in Batumi/ Georgia from November 27 to December 6, 1999. The Georgian Chess Federation will have to transfer a guarantee sum of 25.000 Swiss Francs to the ECU account by the end of March 1999. In connection with the European Team Championship the General Assembly of the European Chess Union will be held on December 5,1999.

Javier Ochoa de Echagüen Estibález proposed to hold the European Team Championship every 2 years. The Board recommended approval and asked him for a respective motion at the General Assembly in Georgia.

The dates for the European Team Championship 2003 should be fixed and published long time in advance, preferably at this year’s General Assembly.

The Board clearly decided to create Individual European Championships for men and women. A final decision should be taken by the General Assembly. Thereafter the bid procedure should be opened.

The European Junior Championship will be held from October 1 to 15,1999 near Patras / Greece.

The European Youth Championships (Boys and Girls U 10 to U 18) will take place in Litohoro / Greece from September 3 to 12, 1999.

The deadline for the bids for the European Junior and Youth events of the year 2000 will be at the end of September 1999. Bids will be favoured which will not include any extra costs for the representative participants of each European federation.

Concerning the European Club Cup, the Board discussed possibilities of changing the present system of preliminaries and final into a 9 round Swiss System Tournament. Finally it was recommended to change the system from the beginning of next year and to stay with the present one for this year. The new regulations will be distributed for approval by the General Assembly in Georgia.

The Board unanimoulsy approved the offer from the Slovenian Chess Federation to hold the 1999 European Club Cup for Women in Nova Gorica / Slovenia from May 22 to 29,1999. Werner Stubenvoll will be the Tournament Director.

The Board (and many European federations) is absolutely unsatisfied with the present cooperation with FIDE. There are e.g. four points which have to be mentioned:

• the rating list has been published too late and there were many mistakes in it
• a circular letter (FIDE Forum) seems to do not to exist anymore, as a result information is not published
• the members of the FIDE commissions and committees are not yet published, consequently they cannot start their work
• in general the communication with FIDE is very poor.

The Board will offer FIDE to try to find a common solution for the calculation of the ratings.

Lakhdar Mazouz (Continental President of Africa) reported about the need for cooperation between Europe and Africa. Up to now the African federations mainly got support from the FIDE CACDEC-programme. He now thinks, the time has come to take appropriate measures to bring Africa to the path of chess development. The main idea of the new cooperation should be to use the already existing ties between some African and European countries. It has been agreed that the Presidents of the African and the European continent, will be responsible for this coordination. An the next meeting of the General Assembly the European federations should be informed about this project and should be asked for helping Africa.

FIDE was founded on July 20, 1924 in Paris. FIDE plans to mark this important date in the calendar. Unfortunately, there is no information about details, neither from FIDE nor from the French Chess Federation which is going to organize an anniversary festival in Paris. The European federations are requested to contribute to this FIDE anniversary.

The next Board Meeting is planned from June 11 to 13, 1999. Mikka Markkula will make an effort to hold this meeting in Finland. Federations being interested in holding a Board Meeting, should contact the ECU Secretariat in Berlin.

Kind regards

Horst Metzing