Groups European Championship Qualifier announced

In a stream call, the WBSC Europe announced the four groups and their participants of the 2021 European Championship Qualifier. The qualifiers will be played at the same time. Five surprising countries were added to these qualifiers.

The group that will play in Utena, Lithuania contains:
– Georgia
– Greece
– Lithuania
– Poland
– Romania

The group in Bratislava, Slovakia contains:
– Bulgaria
– Finland
– Hungary
– Slovakia

The Beograd, Serbia group contains:
– Estonia
– Ireland
– Serbia
– Ukraine

The group in Moscow, Russia contains:
– Belarus
– Russia
– Slovenia
– Switzerland
– Turkey

The twelve teams that participated in the previous European B pool were a fix: Lithuania, Poland, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovakia, Ireland, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Switzerland. Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine are added to make bigger groups. One can only wonder why Turkey was favored over Norway. The Norwegians are ranked #75 in the World Rankings, while Turkey doesn’t even appear in that ranking.

The tournaments will be played from June 29/30 through July 3/4, 2021.
The winner of each qualifier will head to the main tournament in Italy in September.

A big thank you goes out to @greekbaseball for the information it provided.