'More than a football tournament'

'Enormous efforts'
Arnaut, the assistant minister to Portuguese prime minister Durão Barroso, said: "The Portuguese flags that are everywhere around the country are impossible to be counted, but they are there. I want to thank all the nameless people in this country and the organisers themselves for the enormous efforts put in to the tremendous success of the EURO in this country and abroad.

Population involved
"On behalf of the Portuguese government and Euro 2004, S.A. I want to say that this event has been seen principally as an opportunity to involve the population in the event and that the EURO is much more than a football tournament."

Cultural events
There are 4,110 volunteers working around the clock and a special programme of cultural events has been organised across Portugal. Arnaut, who was addressing journalists in Lisbon, said: "Since the start of the tournament, the host cities have organised 52 cultural events - concerts, exhibitions and the like - and the interaction between the visitors and the domestic population on the edges of the sports event has been remarkable.

Fans praised
"The number of visitors, especially foreign, in museums all over the country has been extraordinary, proving EURO 2004™ is more then just a sports event." Arnaut went on to applaud the good behaviour of the visiting fans, particularly those without tickets. "I want to praise the impeccable behaviour of the fans without tickets, who have been going to the fan zones throughout the country," he said.

Transport
Hotels in the host cities are "close to 100 per cent" and to convey the scale of the influx of fans into Portugal, Arnaut quoted the 32,000 passengers who had landed at Lisbon airport in the last week - "about nine per cent of the total volume of air traffic of the airport" - and the 37,000 at Porto airport. Also, "the railway system had an increase in demand of about 45 per cent - an impressive number of 110,900 passengers a day".

Massive increase
Meanwhile, the two metro stations feeding the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon reported a 1,000 per cent rise in passengers on the day of the France-England match, when 52,800 people disembarked there. "I want to congratulate all the workers and officials of the Lisbon underground on the immense efforts and success of this operation," he said.