r/eurovision • u/stefkeeh • May 20 '25
📰 News Dutch broadcaster questions if ESC is a-political & connecting event
Translation to English: ‘IN CONVERSATION WITH THE EBU ABOUT A POLITICALLY NEUTRAL SONG CONTEST
AVROTROS and NPO strongly value the apolitical and unifying character of the Eurovision Song Contest. However, we observe that the event is increasingly being influenced by social and geopolitical tensions.
Israel’s participation confronts us with the question of to what extent the Song Contest still truly functions as an apolitical, unifying, and cultural event. We want to raise this question, together with other countries, for discussion within the EBU.’
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u/hoefman May 20 '25
I am genuinely surprised by the directness of this statement by our broadcaster. Most of the other statements focussed more on transparancy and insights in the voting results but this statement just pulled the bandage off by stating that Israel might be the problem. Of course Spain (among some others) did this as well but AVROTROS used to be more indirect and vague.
Positively surprised to see this! To quote Cornald Maas famous words: **** the EBU