Wroclaw's Expo OK
By : Juliet D. Golden
The city of Wroclaw last week was courting German TV star and UN Goodwill Ambassador Alfred Biolek to win his backing for the city's bid to host the 2010 World's Fair.
The road to 2010: Wroclaw picked up international support in its bid to host the World's Fair.
On a two-day whistle-stop tour of Poland, which included meetings in Warsaw with Jolanta Kwasniewska and Warsaw Mayor Pawel Piskorski, Biolek met with local and regional political leaders to discuss ways to promote Wroclaw as a viable candidate for the Expo in nine years' time.
According to Biolek, the city would be an ideal venue.
"I am convinced after this short visit that Wroclaw, with its flair and atmosphere is ideally suited to hold the Expo," Biolek said.
Biolek's vote of confidence represents a key step in the city's effort to gain international backing for the bid. National support of the initiative was secured last fall when Parliament in a near-unanimous vote passed a resolution calling for Wroclaw to host the event. That ballot opened the way for Wroclaw to submit its formal application to the International Expo office in Paris.
While Wroclaw authorities continue to build up national and international support, skeptics contend that in comparison to its key competitors Shanghai or Buenos Aires, Poland's fourth-largest city lacks the infrastructure or renown needed to pull off such a high profile international event.
The financial snags resulting from last year's Expo host Hanover, in Germany, have had some Poles wondering whether the event will bring prosperity or bust. While the Expo raised some DM4 billion in value-added tax for the German economy, Expo Hanover, the company charged with organizing the event, ran a DM2.4 billion deficit. These lackluster results mean that organizers here will have to rework their assumptions to land financial backing for the initiative in the future.
However, doomsday scenarios have failed to daunt Wroclaw officials. Next week Expo organizers are due to submit the city's initial application to the international exhibition office (BIE) in Paris announcing the candidature, according to Pawel Moras, director of the Expo office in Wroclaw.
"All indications are that the (initial application) will be submitted on June 6 in Paris," Moras said. "The documents are ready and waiting on Prime Minister (Jerzy Buzek)'s desk and will be signed in the next couple of days."
Once the initial application is submitted, Expo organizers will have to come up with the funds to promote the city internationally. While Wroclaw may have received national political support, politicians were not so generous as to fork out the estimated $30 million needed to promote the city worldwide. This marketing allotment was axed from this year's budget.
"The international budget for promotion was $30 million this year," Wladyslaw Serwatowski, the person in charge of Wroclaw's expo effort told the WBJ earlier this year.
But Wroclaw appears to have found a new convert in Biolek. After his two-day visit, the celebrity plans to host a program on the city next autumn. His Tuesday-night prime-time program "Boulevard Bio" attracts 2 million-3 million viewers a week, Moras said.
"In the autumn I plan to dedicate one of my talk shows to a high-ranking German-speaking official who would be able to talk about Poland, and in particular we would be interested in Wroclaw and the possibilities of organizing a promotional campaign for Expo," Biolek said through a translator.
Biolek, a media professor in Cologne's Kunsthochshchule fur Medien, was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund last November.
