Circular Letter 5 / 2005

Written by Heinz Herzog, WebAdmin

Monday, 24 December 2007, id:363 Article cached on Saturday, 05 July 2008 02:34:53

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To:

All European Federations

Associated members, Board members,

FIDE and FIDE Zone Presidents

15 August 2005

Dear Friends,

The European Team Championship in Gothenburg/Sweden showed some surprising results. Finally, the Netherlands won the title ahead of Israel and France. In the women’s group the Polish team won the gold medal followed by Georgia and Russia. Congratulation to all successful teams and many thanks to the Swedish Chess Federation and the Organizing Committee for an excellent organisation of these championships.

At the same time, the ECU General Assembly and a Board meeting were held. The main conclusions are as follows:

• Statutes have been changed in regard to the next election of the Board in Turin/Italy 2006. The Secretary General will be an elected member of the Board, the current position of the Vice President will be deleted. Instead of the present election procedure where only half of the Board is elected every two years all Board members will be elected together for a period of 4 years. This means that next year the General Assembly has to vote for the entire Board. The President, the Deputy President, the Secretary General and the Treasurer will be elected on a combined ticket.
• Kamen Toshkov from Bulgaria has been elected as Treasurer for the period of one year. He has replaced the late Egon Ditt.
• The Board has decided upon the venues of several of the European Championships 2007:
  European Senior Team Championship in Dresden/Germany from 16 to 23 February.
  European Youth Rapid & Blitz Championship probably in Herceg Novi/Montenegro from 1 to 5 October.
• The winner of the European Rapid Championship at the beginning of this year in Basel (GM Artur Jussupow/Germany) is the official title holder of 2004 – as this tournament was originally planned for last year. Therefore the 2005 European Rapid Championship will be held in Warsaw/Poland in the middle of December.
• Cannes/France will host the European Blitz Championship 2006 on 19 February.
• The tournament rules for the European Club Cup for women have been changed for a transitional period 2005 and 2006. The federations are allowed to enter up to four teams. A foreign player is allowed to participate for a club if she represents it in the national team championship, even if this one takes place after the European Club Cup. If in the latter case the player will not participate in the national team championship a penalty fee fixed by the Board has to be paid.
• The tournament rules for the European Youth Team Championship have been amended to enable the participation of up to three teams per federation. This stipulation has come into force immediately.
• The previous European School Chess Team Festival has been transformed into an official ECU event and will be named championship. It will be held next year in Varna/Bulgaria during a period between 20 and 30 June 2006.
• The European Amateur Championship 2006 has been awarded once more to Pardubice/Czech Republic. The dates will be 22 to 29 July. The organizer offers as well the participation in a European Rapid Amateur Open.
• The decision on the European Youth Championship and on the European Club Cup 2007 will be taken by the Board at the next meeting in October because inspections still have to be made.
• No bids have been received for the European Individual Championships 2007, for the European Senior Championship 2007 and for the European Youth Team Championship 2007. President Boris Kutin is now authorized to negotiate with all respective organizers without any commitment in respect of the bidding procedure.
• Peter Rajcsanyi, chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee for a General Review of the ECU Statutes, tabled the report to the General Assembly (annex). All federations are requested to deal with this report in order to discuss it in Turin next year.

The Association of Professional Players (ACP) has addressed the ECU Board concerning a Euroleague. The current European Club Cup should be changed by adding a round-robin tournament with the best 8 clubs. 6 of them will stay in the Euroleague, the two last will be replaced in a promotion system by the first two teams of the European Club Cup. The Board has expressed the willingness to discuss this issue but has stated that the next General Assembly will be responsible for any decision making.

Attached you will find an updated tournament calendar and an announcement of the organizer of the 8^th European Senior Team Championship 2006 in Dresden/Germany. We would like to ask all federations to promote senior chess and to send their teams to this championship.

At the eve of the General Assembly in Gothenburg the Board invited all delegates to a reception on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the European Chess Union. Official ECU ties and badges were presented to the invitees. The former ECU President Prof. Kurt Jungwirth/Austria sent the following greetings:

"I want to extend my best wishes and greetings to the European delegates in Gothenburg. Twenty years ago at the FIDE Congress in Graz we founded the European Chess Union. The idea was to represent and to defend European federations and their players within FIDE. Founding president was Rolf Littorin from Sweden. One year later he asked me to take over. The beginning was very hard as the leadership of FIDE did not appreciate our ideas. However, when the political division of the European continent collapsed in 1990 the European Chess Union began to flourish.

When in 1998 Boris Kutin took over from me a professional approach to European chess policy became possible. Other continents began to follow our example.

Many thanks go to all those who have worked and who work for ECU. Good luck for united chess in Europe".

By the way, Founding President Rolf Littorin, 82, attended the opening ceremony of the European Team Championship.

The new ECU Manual will be printed within the next month. It will include all changes of the Statutes and new addresses. The federations will receive some copies by post.

Best regards,

Horst Metzing

Secretary General

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