The 31st European Athletics Indoor Championships will be held in the French capital Paris at the magnificent Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy arena between 4-6 March, 2011.

Europe again confirmed its role as the global focal point of indoor athletics with 'one-day' meetings on the continent being the best in the world this winter, according to the well-known Hungarian statistical and results service website All-Athletics.com.

Based on the performances achieved by athletes at the meetings, the best five meetings in the world were held in Europe, with the leading meeting for the 2010 season being the UKA Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham (46,196 points), the British event being ranked just ahead of the Stuttgart Sparkassen Cup (45,986).

The top pair reversed their positions of 12 months ago but they remain, without doubt, the best two indoor meetings in the world.

The Dusseldorf PSD Bank Meeting (44,943) is in third place, showing a big increase in quality from last year.  Fourth place went to the GE Galan meeting in Stockholm (44, 718) with the Pas de Calais meeting in Lievin, France, ranked fifth (43,806).

In the special indoor meetings category i.e. meetings focusing principally on a smaller number of field events, number one is the Pedro´s Cup in Bydgoszcz, Poland (10,338 points) with  Germany's Arnstadt High Jump meeting in second place (10,315) and the Zepter Pole Vault Stars, staged in the Ukrainian city of  Donetsk third (10,088).

Europe can lay claim to being the historical home of indoor athletics.

The very first recorded indoor meeting in the world was held in London's Ashburnham Hall on November 7, 1863, when the West London Rowing Club staged an evening of competitions illuminated by gaslight.

The European Indoor Games were inaugurated in 1966, the first pan-continental indoor event, and the first fully-fledged European Athletics Indoor Championships took place in 1970.

The 31^st European Athletics Indoor Championships in 2011 will be held in the French capital Paris at the magnificent Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy arena between March 4-6, 2011.

The official championships website www.paris-2011.com is already online.

Nine of the 12 IAAF World Indoor Championships to date have also been held in Europe and after this weekend's Championships in Doha, Qatar, the event will return to Europe in two year's time when the 2012 edition will be held in Istanbul, Turkey.