Draw procedure for first phase of 2015 World Championship Qualification Europe released

The draw for the first phase of the 2015 World Championship Qualification Europe will take place on 27 June 2013 at 14:30 hrs at the EHF Office in Vienna.

There will be a live ticker on www.eurohandball.com and live tweets available via the EHF Media and Communications Twitter channel, @ehfmedia.

Overall 37 European teams have registered for the 2015 World Championship in Qatar. 12 of 24 spots are available for European teams at the final tournament, an additional 13th will go to the defending champions from Spain.

Three spots will go to the three best ranked teams at the EHF EURO 2014 in Denmark, the remaining nine will be decided in play-off matches involving 18 European teams.

13 teams are already qualified for the play-offs. The remaining five teams will be decided in the first qualification phase for the 2015 World Championship.

This qualification phase will be played over three weeks in home and away matches among the following 20 national teams:

Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine.

This first qualification phase will be played in five groups of four teams each.

The winner of each group qualifies for the play-off matches, which will be played on 7/8 June and 14/15 June 2014.

The draw procedure can be downloaded here.