The organisers of the 2020 European Athletics Championships remain hopeful the event will take place in Paris in August.

On Tuesday, it was announced that the Olympic Games in Tokyo, scheduled for this summer, would be pushed back 12 months until July 2021.

“To have the light at the end of the tunnel that Paris 2020 may still go ahead is something positive in these extremely hard times,” said Periklis Iakovakis, chairman of the athletes committee.

“This has been a stressful and confusing period for athletes, we have lost our structure and our sense of normality. We join our larger communities in focusing on the health and well-being of everyone during the Covid-19 outbreak.”

The event in France is scheduled to take place from 25-30 August and the local organising committee has been instructed to provide an “immediate and detailed feasibility study for the event” to the European Athletics executive board.

“It is clear we are currently living in unprecedented times that require us to be flexible, open-minded and realistic,” said European Athletics first vice president Dobromir Karamarinov.

“Above all, the health and safety of the athletes, officials, fans, volunteers, staff and everyone involved in European athletics must be our very top priority.”

A number of athletics events have already been rearranged, with both the European 10,000m Cup and European Mountain Running Championships moved to 2021.

But the European Athletics Under-18 Championships, which were scheduled for 16-19 July in Rieti, Italy will now not take place in 2020.

And the Leiria 2020 European Throwing Cup, originally scheduled for 21-22 March in Portugal and postponed earlier this month, has now been cancelled.

The European Athletics Council will next meet via video conference on 7-8 May.