The Men’s 18 European Handball Championship is an event for players born 1994 or younger. It will be carried out in Austria between 12 and 22 July 2012 with the playing venues being Arena Rieden Vorkloster in Bregenz and Sporthalle am See in Hard.

Sixteen teams will battle for the title, and only one – hosting nation Austria – is already qualified. Fifteen teams will qualify for the final tournament through qualification that will be carried out between 30 March and 1 April 2012.

The qualification will be drawn on 18 November 2011 at 9:00 hrs (local time) in the Eventpyramide Vösendorf, south of Vienna (AUT) on the occasion of the Conference for Secretaries General, at the 20th anniversary of the European Handball Federation.

Draw Modus

38 national teams will take part in the qualification. They will be drawn into ten groups – eight groups of four teams and two groups of three teams.

15 teams will qualify for the final tournament: in the groups 1 to 5 the top two teams will qualify, in the groups 6 to 10 only the group winner will qualify.

Seedings and pots

The seeding of the national teams is based on the ranking of the 2010 Men’s 18 ECh in Montenegro.

Pot 1

Croatia (automatically placed in Group 1, row 1)
Spain (automatically placed in Group 2, row 1)
Denmark (automatically placed in Group 3, row 1)
Germany (automatically placed in Group 4, row 1)
France (automatically placed in Group 5, row 1)*

* seeding based on the ranking at the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games (3rd place)

Pot 2

The teams of Pot 2 will be drawn into row 1, groups 6-10 and row 2, groups 1-5.

Serbia
Switzerland
Sweden
Slovenia
Russia
Poland
Czech Republic
Iceland
Norway
Portugal

Pot 3

The teams of Pot 3 will be drawn to row 2, groups 6-10, row 3, groups 1-10 and row 4, groups 1-8.

Armenia
Belgium
Belarus
Bulgaria
Estonia
Finland
England
Georgia
Greece
Hungary
Israel
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxemburg
Moldova
FYR Macedonia
Montenegro
Netherlands
Romania
Slovakia
Turkey
Ukraine

Draw Procedure

• In step one, the five teams of Pot 1 are placed to row 1, groups 1-5.
• In step two, the teams of pot 2 are drawn to row 1, groups 6-10 and row 2, groups 1-5.
• In step three, the teams of pot 3 are drawn to row 2, groups 6-10, row 3, groups 1-10 and row 4, groups 1-8.
• In step four, a separate draw will determine theright to organise the qualification tournament.

Teams which were already awarded with the right to organise the 2010 Men’s 18 ECh qualification groups do not have the right to be the organiser of a 2012 Men’s 18 ECh qualification group.

This applies to Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden and the Ukraine.