Ukraine has the prospect of staging the European Swimming Championships in 2018, President of the International Swimming Federation (FINA) Julio Maglione has said.

"The holding of the European Swimming Championships in 2018 is an important step in the development of Ukrainian sport. Ukrainian swimming has good positions in the world. Your swimmers have recently performed successfully on the world stage. Ukraine also has one more advantage: the national swimming federation is implementing a long-term program for the development of this sport," he said at a meeting with journalists on Saturday in Kyiv, where he arrived at the invitation of President of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine Serhiy Bubka to mark the 100th anniversary of the Olympic Kyiv.

He said that the Swimming Federation of Ukraine is holding active preparations so as to receive the right in the next few years to host the European Swimming Championships in the country.

"The Swimming Federation of Ukraine, as before, is very important to FINA, which already includes 204 national federations," Maglione said.

He said that Ukraine would have to equip swimming pools in accordance with international standards in order to participate in a bid to host the European Swimming Championships in 2018.

First Vice-President of the Swimming Federation of Ukraine Dmytro Kachurovsky, who also attended the meeting, in turn, said that the infrastructure that is now being prepared for EuroBasket 2015 would be used to host the European Swimming Championships.

"Ukraine's preparations for EuroBasket 2015 make our task of preparing for the European Swimming Championships easier. FINA gave us the unique technologies that help assemble a swimming pool inside a basketball court," he said.