The sixth boy's championship attracted 13 teams from 10 countries to the beautifully well known holiday resort situated by the famous Balaton lake, where people could not only play for the title of the European Champions but could have enjoyed the sunny weather in their idle time. The European U18 Championship saw for the first time strong Russian side as well as newly constituted, independent Serbia, who thereby recorded first ever chess appearance for the country. The competition was expected to be tough; Hungary were top seeded narrowly edging Croatia, Hungary "B" and Germany. These four sides had average Elo above 2400.

As it happened, the top four and surprise Russia took a hard-fought run for gold. Croatia were the only team with 8 match points scored in the first four rounds but they lost 3½-½ to Hungary on day five and were caught by the latter as well as by the Russians who recovered after round three loss to Hungary "B". In penultimate round Russia held Hungary to a fortunate draw while Croatia won taking narrow lead with 10 match points, overtaking Russia and Hungary by a mere point (tie-breaking, that is game point count was very close too). The Russians were happy to see relatively weak Scottish team being their opponents in the last round. As expected, they wiped out Scotland 3½-½ to take the championship title, as Hungary barely tied vs Romania. In the decisive match of the event Croatia lost to Germany which turned to be a nightmare for them; not only did they lose gold medals but they were also kicked out of the medal zone, losing silver and bronze medals by inferior Buchholz count, having equal match and game point record with Hungary and bronze medal winners Germany. Serbia made a promising entry finishing in fifth.

FM Nechepurenko led Russia to gold scoring 5/7 at top board while IM Arik Braun took individual gold medal at top board scoring 4½/6 in his fifth (!!) consecutive Euro U18 appearance - he was barely 13 as he made his debut in 2001. Surprisingly it was Finnish reserve Sofiev (Elo 2054) who produced best percentage result: he scored 5½/6 performing at 2568!